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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY 



AND OTHER SERMONS, 



REUEN THOMAS, 

MINISTER OF HARVARD CHURCH, BROOKLINE. 

Author of " Emmanuel Church" etc. 




BOSTON': 

D. LOTHROP & COMPANY, 

Franklin and Hawley Sts. 

LONDON: JAMES CLARKE & CO., FLEET ST. 



\ 



JEf/nv* 

.T57S- US' 



COPYRIGHT. 1885, BY 

D. LOTHROP & COMPANY. 



PREFACE. 



I have been many times asked, by friends in 
England and America, to publish a volume of 
Sermons, but have hitherto refrained because I 
was not conscious of anything specially new in my 
way of presenting Biblical truth ; and because my 
method of sermonizing, being a mixture of the 
prepared and extemporaneous, is of all methods 
least fitted to do itself credit in print. 

These sermons that I now offer to my friends 
and the public have not been re-written for publi- 
cation, but are given, as nearly as possible, as 
spoken from the pulpit. The first six were 
a brief course to inquirers; intended to be sug- 
gestive and expository, not at all controversial. 
The other sermons are ordinary Sunday morning 

discourses. E. T. 

iii 



CONTENTS. 



I. 


— Divine Sovereignty , 


7 


II. 


— Man's Sinfulness and Inability 


. 20 


III. 


— Atonement and Expiation 


. 35 


IV. 


— The Divine Helper 


. 49 


V. 


— The Witnessing Church 


. 62 


VI.- 


— Retribution .... 


. 74 


VII.- 


— Means and Ends 


. 88 


VIII.- 


— "Worship God" 


102 


IX.- 


— The Child and His Dues . 


118 


X.- 


— A More Excellent Way 


136 


XI.- 


— The Pre-eminence of Christ 


148 


XII.- 


— Our Relationships 


163 


XIII.- 


— The Limitations of Evil 


179 


XIV.- 


— For His Name's Sake 


194 


XV.- 


— Scarchin^s of Heart 


210 



vi CONTENTS. 

XVI.— The Divine Eesponsibility . 223 

XVII.— Predestination . . . .235 

XVIII.— Self-Improvement . . .250 

XIX.— Weariness in Weil-Doing . . 264 

XX.— The Divine Invisibility . . 279 



I. 

DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 



And Jesus came unto them and spake unto them, saying, All 
authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go 
ye therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptising them 
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost : 
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you; 
and lo, I am with you alway even unto the end of the world. — 
Matt., xxviii: 18. 

THE words " Divine Sovereignty" have often- 
times been so used as to create a prejudice 
against them. Man's own ideas of Sovereignty 
have been imported into them. I am aware that 
in using them I may put myself at a disadvantage 
in obtaining, with some, ready receptivity for the 
ideas which I propose to ask you to consider. 
Persuaded as I am that many of these ideas have 
not been correctly apprehended or adequately ap- 
preciated, — persuaded also that there is in them 
truth so important that if we let it slip, we shall 
suffer in increased mental imbecility and moral 
feebleness, it seems to me to be my duty to speak 
to those of you whose minds are open to the 

7 



8 DIVINE SO VERE1GNTY. 

truth which Jesus the Christ has brought within 
our grasp, on these essential things — not theo- 
logically or dogmatically but exegetically and 
ethically. 

The Christian Church, through its Apostles, 
received originally a commission from its Founder. 

The record runs thus : — " The eleven disciples 
went into Galilee unto the mountain where Jesus 
had appointed them. And Jesus came unto them 
and spake unto them, saying, All authority hath 
been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go 
ye therefore and make disciples of all the nations, 
baptising them in the name of the Father and of 
the Son and of the Holy Ghost : teaching them to 
observe all things whatsoever I commanded you ; 
and lo, I am with you alway even unto the end of 
the world." 

This is a sweeping statement. It speaks of 
author^ — of authority as deposited in a person. 
It suggests that that person has in himself the 
substance of the Divine nature — otherwise the 
formula to be used in baptism is unintelligible. 
His apostles were to go forth to make disciples of 
all the nations. They were to administer dis- 
ciples' baptism. They were to put the name, 
which implies the ownership of God, on those 
who were baptised. They were to declare, thus, 
that they belonged to God. They were to declare 
that the nations belonged to God. In a word 



DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 9 

they were to announce and maintain the Divine 
Sovereignty over nations. That Divine Sover- 
eignty for this world is deposited in Jesus the 
Christ. 

This is the truth that underlies all else in the 
commission given to the disciples. Therefore, 
because all authority hath been given unto me in 
heaven and on earth, go and make disciples of 
all the nations. 

We must not limit the authority and think of it 
as confined to the church or to Christians alone, 
and to them only so far as they are members of 
organized Christian societies — and only to their 
acts as members of such societies. There is no 
such limitation in the words of our Lord. "All" 
cannot mean less than " all. " The moment we 
begin to limit revealed truths by man's opinions 
that moment we begin the process of belittling 
everything which Jesus has spoken. That moment 
we begin the exaltation of man over Christ — that 
moment we enter on a course the exact opposite 
of the one suggested by John the Baptist: "He 
must increase but I must decrease." We are not 
"of the truth" when we set up the opinions of 
men as of more worth than the explicit teachings 
of Christ. 

Authority — all authority — all Sovereignty over 
man is vested in Christ. 

We can see reasons why it should be. On the 



10 DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 

ground of knowledge; He knows more of the nature 
of Deity — more of the nature of man — and more 
of the nature of things than any other who has 
ever been on this earth knows. 

On the ground of goodness; He has submitted 
himself to all the tests to which the nature of man 
can be subjected and has triumphed in all. Tried 
and tempted by every form of evil, he remains the 
sinless one — spotlessly good. 

But goodness is not simply abstinence from 
acts of sin or feelings that are sinful. It is not 
merely negative. It is positive. This Jesus 
Christ has done everything possible to be done by 
any human, or as far as we can see, by any divine 
being for the sake of helping others. He has 
loved the Eternal Father with all his heart and his 
neighbor as himself. 

That is all I feel called upon to assert, at this 
present stage, on the nature of the goodness of 
Christ. On the grounds of knowledge and good- 
ness in a word on the ground of the superiority 
and excellency of his nature, he is Sovereign. 
It is according to all that we know or imagine of 
the Divine Nature that Sovereignty should be 
deposited in him who is greatest and best. 

In the superiority and excellency of the nature 
of Christ we may see a practically sufficient rea- 
son why the Divine Government of mankind 
should be administered through Jems Christ. 



DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 11 

It is not to be wondered at that in the ultmate 
ordering of the Divine Government superiorities 
should be invested with authority. 

In this age we are compelled to search for the 
ground of things. We must dig down to that 
which is fundamental. There is too much law- 
lessness in society to allow of serious men putting 
one set of opinions against another and in angry 
faction fights contending that one set of opinions 
is right because it is old, and another set wrong 
because there is the flush of youth about them. 
As a general principle we may assume that 
whatever has stood the test of a«;e has essential 
truth in it. The seemingly new must expect to be 
regarded with suspicion until its worth has been 
tested. Whoever accepts an opinion simply 
because it is new and for no other reason stamps 
himself as frivolous. But oftentimes it happens 
that that which seems to be new is the oldest of 
all. A new machine is often the bringing of prin- 
ciples which are as old as the Universe into more 
effective operation. Nothing really new is intro- 
duced. The old is brought into a neater 
useableness. When the lightning shall have been 
domesticated and made to light the girl who has 
to sew into the weary hours of night, nothing new 
will have been brought into the world. It will 
only be a more perfect understanding of the old. 
Everything new in all departments when proved 



12 DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 

practical and useful is simply more perfect under- 
standing of the old. Let us put away all fear 
of knowledge. Ignorance is the thing to be 
feared — ignorance of God — ignorance of our- 
selves — ignorance of the world in which we live. 
That the ignorant people of the country should 
practically rule it — being the multitude, and 
having votes to cast for those who represent 
themselves, this is the danger. And it is 
much more of a danger than any of us see. It 
was ignorance which crucified Jesus the Christ ; 
11 Father, forgive them, for they know not what 
they do." 

The Church of Christ must beware of nar- 
rowing its mission to the world within any limits 
more contracted than those assigned to it in 
its original commission. We have to proclaim the 
Sovereignty of God in an age when so many 
are proclaiming the sovereignty of man — i.e. 
the sovereignty of the multitude — let that 
multitude be composed of whomsoever it may. 
It is true, as one has said, that the idea of 
modern democracy has become predominant under 
the influence of the preaching of the truths which, 
in their best expression, are in the New Testament. 
" Heathenism had no such notion of man as man ; 
it had no glimmer of the preciousness of a soul ; it 
had no likeness to this, introduced and diffused in 
the western world, which revealed that it is not 



DIYIXE SOYEREIGSTY. 13 

for the high, nor for the philosophical, not for the 
wealthy, Dot for emperors or nobles or patricians 
of Rome, but that it is for man as man, for each 
soul of man that God has sent His Son to shed his 
blood, and sent his Spirit for renewal and restora- 
tion to himself as to a Fathers bosom." But 
you have to choose between the Democracies — a 
Christianized democracy or a demonized democra- 
cy. In all its history the Church of Christ has 
never been in the position in which it finds itself 
to-day, here, on this continent. And I am afraid 
we do not see the peculiarity of the position and 
therefore the duty of the hour. I fear that we 
ourselves are only half awake to our responsibilities 
in regard to organized society. Have we any 
definite idea of the Kingship of Christ in reference 
to society? Has not this very idea of the real 
Sovereignty over man, as man, being deposited in 
Christ, a feeling of unreality about it? Do we see 
that if it be a truth it is the most practical of all 
truths ? When a man takes Jesus as Christ 
he takes him as his Sovereign — not simply as his 
Prophet, his Teacher — not simply as his Priest — 
but also as his King. He has to take him for all 
he is, or he can never rise to the full stature of a 
man in Christ Jesus. 

The questions of most urgent practical impor- 
tance in our day are such as relate not to freedom 
but to Government, to Sovereignty, to Authority, 



14 DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 

to Law and Order. There are some countries in 
which the duty of the hour would be to speak of 
Freedom, its nature and its necessity. There is 
no such duty laid upon us in this century so 
far as this country is concerned. In order to 
have right ideas of freedom we must first of 
all have right ideas of Sovereignty. If we un- 
derstand the prophetic element in the New Tes- 
tament Scriptures rightly, the development of 
the spirit of lawlessness is to be one of the signs 
of the latter days of the present dispensation of 
things. I am fully aware that the effect of preach- 
ing the fulness of the Divine nature — that in 
which the gospel consists — that God is love — 
will be in some minds, to produce laxity. And 
yet for the sake of those who have a right to all 
that is revealed of the Divine Nature we must not 
withold any truth. What w r e need to see is that 
Love works through law and not independently of 
it. God is light as well as love. The word light 
suggests holiness. It suggests purity. It sug- 
gests intelligence. It suggests wisdom. All the 
beneficences of the L'niverse depend upon law. 
Destroy law and what then ? Then chaos and 
destruction. Love is seen to demand for its sphere 
of operation law and order. These are the ideas 
we need to have impressed upon our minds in 
this age. 

What is the foundation of human law? Is there 



DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 15 

such a thing as authority ? What is it ? On what 
does it rest? In what is it rooted? What is the 
ground of it? We must ask these questions and 
we must find answers to them. Without debating 
the matter I venture the affirmation that there is 
no answer to be found outside religious truth. 
An irreligious man may say, ' It is necessary. 
It is expedient/ But why ? ' We cannot make our 
fortunes — we cannot possess our comfortable and 
luxurious homes — we cannot sleep well at nights 
— we cannot pursue our pleasures quietly, with- 
out law and order.' But supposing the great 
multitude should be instructed enough in our 
public schools, just enough, to lose all that natural 
fear of superiorities which belongs to superstition 
and ignorance ; supposing they should listen to 
the men who represent lawlessness — the men 
who have nothing to lose even if society becomes 
a chaos — what would they care about these 
material things on which we place so much value ? 
Considerations of necessity and expediency would 
go for nothing. If there be no Divine Sovereignty 
— in itself righteous — with the rigid to rule, 
with the right of authority, then all these lower 
sovereignities are usurpations. Everything that 
man has is derived. From what source is the 
authority which is invested, for instance, in the 
President of the United States ; in the Gov- 
ernor of this state ; in the Judges of the supreme 



16 DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 

court ; in Judges everywhere — derived ? Has it 
any right to be ? The Christian man, if he is as 
intelligent as Christianity is capable of making 
him, has his answer ready. And it is all-sufficient. 
It is this — ' There is a Divine Order in this 
Universe. The Creator must be the Sovereign 
by right and in fact. We have nothing which is 
not derived. Not a faculty, not a power but is 
derived. We are not independent. All round 
and all through we are dependent. We are born 
into an established order of things ; an element 
in it; a part of it. We do not stand alone — 
cannot stand alone. We are related all round.' 
There are no facts less open to question than these 
— that we are related to certain institutions — the 
family and the nation — yea, the Kingdom of 
Christ, for it existed as revealed in the family 
and nation into which we were born. We are 
thus related to organisms which God has made. 
We are thus related to Him. We are under the 
Divine Sovereignty. There can be no doubt of it. 
Our accepting it or rejecting it does not alter the 
fact. We are in the midst of a system of laws 
which God has established. We cannot get from 
under them. They are in us. We are organized 
in accord with them. Thus the Sovereignty of 
God comes into our very nature and makes it 
w T hat it is. These dependencies and these rela- 
tionships put upon us duties and responsibilities. 



THE DIVINE SO VEBEIGNTY. 17 

Herein comes our freedom — we may intelligently 
and voluntarily work with God (to the measure 
to which He has revealed Himself) in the family, 
in the church, in the nation, or we may igno- 
rantly and wilfully (all we can) work against Him. 
In the one case we are subjects, in the other 
rebels. In the one case we rise into the condi- 
tion and feeling and apprehension of children in 
a household, and are as free and happy as chil- 
dren at home ; in the other case rebellion grad- 
ually but surely hardens down into that wilfulness 
which becomes, in the process of time, total 
alienation moving steadily toward demonism. The 
facts of life compel us to see that irreligion 
never stops at mere inhumanity. Its final form is 
demonism. 

Now, the irreligious man has no answer to the 
question — on what rests the authority which is 
vested in the parent in regard to his child ; in the 
Governor in regard to the State ; in the Judge as 
regards the administration of law? When I say 
that he has no answer, I mean that he has no answer 
which is not like a house built on the sand. 

If an eternal foundation for a temporal institu- 
tion cannot be found it cannot stand ; it must go. 
All permanent necessary institutions have their 
ultimate authority in the right of the Creator 
to govern — in a word, in Divine Sovereignty. 
Democracy may be so regarded as to become the 



18 DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 

hugest idolatry which has ever been set up in the 
world — the idolatry of the will of man. The 
Christian can have nothing to do with it under 
that aspect. God's ultimate purpose in reference 
to nations is declared to us in that nation of Israel. 
That ultimate purpose is not democracy but 
theocracy — not the rule of the many over the few, 
but the rule of God over all. And if the Church 
of Christ fails of seeing this, and of teaching it, 
and of illustrating it in its own life — it so far fails 
of comprehending the greatness of the commission 
entrusted to it, and the basis truth on which that 
commission rests. All rightful authority over 
man is deposited in Jesus the Christ. He is the 
sole Sovereign. To submit to his Sovereignty is to 
be in right relations with God, and so, essentially, 
to be free from guilt. To refuse to acknowledge 
that Sovereignty is to be out of rightful relations 
towards God, and so, to be now and as long as the 
refusal continues, guilty in God's sight. And 
while the Creator has revealed himself as " long- 
suffering, plenteous in goodness and truth — not 
willing that any should perish but that all should 
come to repentance, " yet has he also said that 
" he will by no means clear the guilty. " Let us 
try to appreciate something of the magnitude of 
this most practical and most necessary revelation — 
"All authority hath been given tome in heaven 
and on earth, go ye therefore and make disciples 



DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 19 

of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of 
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit : 
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I 
commanded you; and lo, I am with you alway 
even unto the end of the world," 



II. 

MAN'S SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 



All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. — Romans, 
iii: 23. 

IN speaking on the theme of Man's Sinfulness and 
consequent Inability I am not under the neces- 
sity of occupying your time in any elaborate at- 
tempt at proving either the one or the other. It is 
universally admitted that there is something defec- 
tive, inharmonious and wrong in man's nature. The 
best and the worst of men admit this much. Any 
man who argued to the contrary would be regarded 
as lacking in intelligence as well as in moral sense, 
as odd and singular, as a man whose views and 
opinions of things were so peculiar as to cause him 
to be regarded with something of suspicion. In 
every one of us there is a something good which 
perceives a something bad and wrong. There is 
also something in every man which whispers of 
an ideal state. There is in all a kind of reminis- 
cence of a lost condition. This reminiscence has 
never, I think, been more exquisitely phrased, 

20 



MAX' 8 SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 21 

than in the poet's Wordsworth's "Intimations of 
Immortality from Recollections of Early Child- 
hood." The poet can account for the inward con- 
dition which he finds in himself and in other men 
only by the suggestion that we have had a prior 
existence, traces of which still remain with us : 

" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; 

The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 

And cometh from afar; 
Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God, who is our home." 

In order to account for what we find in our- 
selves we need not accept the extreme explanation 
of the poet. It suffices if we think of our nature 
as having had, originally controlling it, a supreme 
love which has been largely but by no means 
entirely lost, which is now only a reminiscence. 
The idea of the lost condition hides itself in the 
soul but can never " except in the worst of the 
worst" be entirely killed out. That in us which 
accuses us when we do wrong and commends us 
when we do right cannot be fallen and sinful. 
That must be righteous and holy. And so there 
is in us all a viceroy asserting Kingship in the 
name of the true Sovereign of our souls. Job 
recognized it. David recognized it. Call it Con- 
science, call it what you will, it is there as a fact. 



22 MAN'S SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 

And I am dealing, in the simplest possible way, 
with facts of consciousness. 

But there is in us not only this sense of righteous- 
ness — of a lost ideal state but much else. In every 
man there is a sense of incongruity — of dividedness 
of nature — of disharmony. We are not at 
one with ourselves. The Apostle Paul puts 
the case thus — ' ' The flesh lusteth against the 
spirit and the spirit against the flesh, and these are 
contrary the one to the other." There is a 
depravity, a degeneration in our nature. And as 
the several parts of our nature are so intimately 
associated that if one part suffers all the other 
parts suffer with it, so the depraved condition is 
not moral alone or intellectual alone, or physical 
alone. All departments are weakened from their 
original strength, and corrupted from their original 
purity. The intellect, the affection, the will, are 
not in that condition which is seen to be possible. 
As a matter of fact we look upon one another as 
beings not entirely trustworthy. Every man puts 
every other man upon trial, and does not entirely 
trust him until he has had considerable experience 
of him. If man be not a depraved creature, why 
this universal suspicion? Surely no one would 
choose to live in a perpetual state of distrust, for it 
is an exceedingly uncomfortable state. And yet, 
the men and women who are naturally at the 
farthest remove from this suspiciousness of dis- 



MAN'S SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 23 

position, are compelled by the experience they have 
of life to exercise no little of caution. Without 
parading the acknowledged vices of society before 
your gaze, there is enough of evidence among the 
most decent and well-behaved people of the world 
to testify that we have in us the conviction that all 
men everywhere are in a depraved condition. 
And yet they are not so depraved as not to know 
that they are depraved. 

It is often argued that we are here in a state of 
probation. But man as man has had his probation 
and has fallen. It would seem that innocence 
apart from experience cannot stand. The repre- 
sentation of the case in the Book of Genesis is that 
Adam's ' ; tree of knowledge of good and evil " 
tested his obedience. Our Tree of Life — Jesus 
Christ — tests our obedience. Only with a differ- 
ence. The first man of whom we read, knowing 
only good, wanted to know what evil was. We, 
having in ourselves the knowledge of good and 
evil, are put upon trial, whether we will adhere 
persistently to that which is good — not simply 
good in the abstract — good only as an idea — 
but good in the concrete — good personalized in 
Christ Jesus. Nothing appeals to our whole nature 
until it becomes personalized. 

Taking these simple facts, which are undeniable, 
— what does this condition mean? Is there any ex- 
planation of it? There is suggested the explana- 



24 MAN'S SINFULNESS AXD iy ABILITY. 

tion of incompleteness. Our nature, say some, is 
moving on gradually towards unity, harmony, per- 
fection. Give it time and it will come out according 
to the highest idea that the best and most intelli- 
gent man has of it. Theoretically this looks plausi- 
ble. And if we could shut ourselves away from 
ourselves, and from all the facts of society, the 
idea of simple imperfection might seem large 
enough to cover the case. The apple is green 
and tart, but leave it alone for a month or two, and 
it will be pleasant to the eye for its color, and 
sweet to the taste. Unhappily, except under 
certain conditions, and in a certain environment, 
man as he grows older does not grow better. The 
generosity, the trustingness, beauty and sweetness 
of youth, seem to fade away, and nothing quite so 
good comes in the place of them. In most cases 
the whole of this life of ours seems to be occupied 
with the scattering of illusions ; with the proving 
that our views are short-sighted ; that our opinions 
are false ; that our pleasures cannot last ; that 
the things which seem to be blessings are very 
often curses in disguise, so far as their relation 
to individuals is concerned, and worst illusion of 
all, that which relates to our own view of our own 
nature. There is something else than incomplete- 
ness. This idea does not account for our sense of 
guilt — a sense belonging to every man — the 
most pitiable form of misery, and yet, strange 



MAX'S SINFULNESS AND INABILTT. 25 

to say, the deepest possible sense of guilt is not 
half so appalling as would be no sense of it at all. 
Whether the restlessness and the superabundant 
activity of the world are not more due to the 
inward sense of guilt in man, from which, in one 
way or another he is striving to free himself, than 
to anything higher, is a question worth while our 
considering. " The wicked is like the troubled 
sea which cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire 
and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to 
the wicked." The idea of incompleteness as 
accounting for what we find in ourselves is not 
large enough. It leaves out too much. There are 
too many facts which lie outside of it. 

It covers a part of the ground but only a part. 
It needs along with it the idea of depravation — 
an idea which satisfies the Conscience as well as 
the Intelligence. The sense of not being right — 
of being wrong — of being at war with something 
— with someone, is in us all. This is what we 
call the sense of sin. This sense is not consistent 
with inward happiness. It is an internal trouble 
which men would get away from if they could. 
But no man can get away from himself. He may 
change his place of abode — his associations — his 
surroundings, and for the time be so occupied with 
the newness that presents itself, as to get a partial 
and temporary relief. But the old internal state 
is there, and soon re-asserts itself in all its power. 



26 MAN'S SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 

No external condition can eradicate it. Men try- 
all sorts of devices to rid themselves of this inter- 
nal sense of something wrong. Sometimes they 
change their opinions, putting off one set, and 
adopting another. But the taking up with that 
which is more lax, or that which is more thorough, 
does not alter the inward condition. The bad 
consciousness is there all the time. It is deeper 
in the nature than the region to which opinion be- 
longs. It is not wrong opinion simply but some- 
thing more inward which troubles us. There is 
on other word but sinfulness which will express the 
nature of the trouble. TTe have from the past 
inherited a depravity — a degeneration of nature. 
And it has corrupted the intellect — the affections 

— the will. TTe think wrongly — we feel wrongly 

— we act wrongly. And we are all in the same 
state. No man can set himself up as of a differ- 
ent order of being from the rest. " God be 
merciful to me a sinner " — is a prayer suited to 
everyone. 

While I am carefully abstaining from the use of 
scientific theological expressions, and interpreting 
the simple facts of consciousness, yet I can find no 
word that will stand in the place of this word 
' sinfulness.' For it is quite certain that there are 
in man not only defects which mean weakness, but 
that there is also a parent defect which means 
guilt. There is no man living who has not this 



MAN'S 8INFULNE88 AND INABILITY. 87 

sense of inward guiltiness. And those who, to us, 
q the best and the truest are the readiest to ac- 
knowledge that it belongs to themselves equally 
with others. So generally is this the ease, that 
the claim of perfectionism, on the part of any. is 
met with a general incredulity not unmixed with 
scorn. The man is suspected all the more because 
of his claim. It seems to be indecent as well as 
impossible. Apart then from the gross vices of 
the disreputable among men and women, we per- 
ceive that there is, in this nature of ours, a degen- 
eration which is not simply a defect, not simply 
an entrenched ignorance, but a condition so radical 
that all efforts of self upon self are insufficient for 
the freeing of our nature from it. 

And this I — by which I 

mean, it affects the whole nature. No part is 
untainted. It is not possible that any part should 
be. Our nature is bo connected, part with part, 
that degeneration in on^ region means degenera- 
tion in every region. If a man be unjust in his 
feelings he will be unjust in his thinking and un- 
just in his action. It is the merest rubbish to 
talk of a man being it heart and bad every- 

where else. If the fruit of the tree be bad the 
is bad. An I sinful . tans corrupted 

feeling, o trrapted thinking, corrupted willing, 
corrupted action. The unity of our nature n< 
sitates this. Great thinker- in all time-, and in 



28 MAN' 8 SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 

all countries, have perceived that if that centre we 
call the heart be depraved all other parts of our na- 
ture are lowered thereby. In his Ethics the old 
Pagan philosopher Aristotle writes " For depravity 
perverts the vision and causes it to be deceived 
on the principles of action, so that it is clearly 
impossible for a person who is not good to be wise 
or prudent." " The pure heart makes a clear 
head" says another of the ancient celebrities. So 
Carlyle in modern times, to quote only one of 
many, writing of Mirabeau asserts, "The real 
quality of our insight, how justly and thoroughly 
we shall comprehend the nature of a thing, es- 
pecially of a human thing, depends on our patience, 
our fairness, lovingness, what strength soever we 
have ; intellect comes from the whole man, as it is 
the lio-ht that enlightens the whole man." 

Let us bear in mind this, then, that whatever 
affects the centre of our nature affects also every 
part of it to the outermost extremities. If there be 
impure blood in the heart there will be impure 
blood in every vein of every part of the whole 
body. And so, if there be depravity in the affec- 
tional region of our nature there will be depravity 
in the will region, in the region of the intellect, in 
the action. Nothing will be what it would be 
if that depravity were not there. I want that our 
young people especially should recognize that a 
degenerated heart means a degenerated intellect. 



MAN'S SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 29 

This degeneration means not only bad disposition, 
it means biassed and depraved intellectual quality, 
inability everywhere. And this must of necessity 
be so, because of the unity of our nature. So that 
on the highest themes, the thinking of a man out 
of right relations to God is not trustworthy, can- 
not be, nor on any themes which involve char- 
acter. To say that there is no difference in the 
moral quality of opinions, and that one set of 
opinions is as good as another, is surely to speak 
so as to draw away from us the intellectual respect 
of all thinking men. There is more depravity in 
one set of opinions than in another. There are 
some views of man's nature and of life which make 
it much easier for a man to sin than other views. 
Now I do not think that there is any mercy, or any 
kindness, in any teaching which leads men to as- 
sume that sinfulness is only an eruption on the 
skin and not a disease of the heart. Only " fools 
make a mock at sin." There are countless instan- 
ces of men so coarse and vulgar in feeling, so far 
away from all true refinement of mind, that, seem- 
ingly, they have no perception of sinfulness as a 
spiritual malady. Until it externalizes itself in 
vice, until it shows itself in acts of degradation 
and shamefulness, they do not recognize it as of 
any consequence. They take no note of the dis- 
position to folly and stupidity which belongs to 
the depraved condition; no note of the terrible 



30 MAN'S SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 

moral torpidity which belongs to it. Sinfuluess 
when it becomes vice, disease in the body, de- 
struction of tissue, spoliation of form, making 
loathesome that which God made beautiful — that is 
the only aspect in which sin stirs their natures 
into any feeling of antipathy. And even over 
that they can jest. 

I venture the assertion that anyone who has 
mind and heart great enough to look under the 
surface of things, and not simply at the outside 
of things, must perceive that there is sin and 
sin. Do we not make a distinction in our owii 
feeling between sin which indicates infirmity and 
sin which indicates a self-assertive determina- 
tion to do and be something which involves pride, 
envy, malignity and the utmost of want of 
consideration for others? The New Testament 
speaks of " sins of the flesh" and " sins of the 
spirit. " The devil sins, we must remember, 
were not committed in the flesh, and yet they are 
of all sins the most heinous. 

Now it cannot be doubted that the view we 
take of this fact of sinfulness, universally admitted 
in some form, will influence our estimate of every 
other vital truth. If sinfulness be only ignorance 
we need only a Teacher. If sinfulness be only 
the inward condition w T hich has gradually been 
wrought in us from our misconception of things, 
we need only an Instructor. If sinfulness be only 



KAN 9 8 SINFULNESS AND IXABILTT. 31 

disease we need only a Physician. If sinfulness 

be only error we need only an Example. But if 
it be something more than ignorance, something 
more than disease, something more than error, we 
need in Him who is to deliver us from it a power 
other than that possessed by the Teacher, the 
Physician, the Exemplar, as I believe that the 
Xew Testament distinctly teaches. If I were to 
occupy myself in trying to make you believe that 
the sinfulness in this nature of ours can be swept 
out by any amount of education of the intellect, 
by any degree of culture, however thorough, which 
stops short of the culture of the heart, I should be 
false to the deepest convictions of my nature. 
And whatever comes of it I must be true to these ; 
and especially so when I think that others may be 
misled by my underestimating of how much is 
involved in this word * sinfulness.' Sinfulness 
means ignorance, yes ; it means error, yes : 
it means disease, yes; but it means a great deal 
more. In many and many a case it means that 
state of heart in which the idea of God is more 
hateful than the idea of the Devil. I look upon 
those who are vicious, the fallen man, the fallen 
woman, the drunkard, the libertine, the debau 
chee, and it is sad enough, God knows. But I 
have known fallen men and fallen women and 
drunkards who have never from their youth up 
ceased from praying ' God be merciful to me a 



32 MAN'S SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 

sinner.' I do not want to forget the lines of 
the hymnist : 

" Think gently of the erring one! 

And let us not forget 
However darkly stained by sin, 

He is our brother yet. 



Heir of the same inheritance, 

Child of the self -same God; 
He hath but stumbled in the path, 

We have in weakness trod." 

I want to live in that spirit and temper of mind 
as long as life shall last. I dare not trust my own 
short-sighted views of sin. On all these questions 
I want to be a learner from Him who is of all 
Teachers on vital matters incomparably the great- 
est. I cannot forget his words spoken to men 
whose place in the society of his day was not the 
lowest- — "The publicans and harlots enter the 
Kingdom of God before you." There are sins of 
the flesh which pollute, which destroy reputation, 
which bring wretchedness and misery, social de- 
gradation and much else. There are sins of the 
spirit which bring none of these, and yet, if Jesus 
of Nazareth be a true prophet, which put men and 
women at even a farther distance from God. 
The teaching is not mine, it is His. Of what 
condition of heart is he who is amiable and 
placid until someone speaks to him such a truth 



MAN'S SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 33 

as is contained in these words ' God is Love. 
God is Light. God so loved the world that he 
gave His only begotten Son that whosoever be- 
lieveth in Him should not perish but have ever- 
lasting life." Then, his whole soul is filled with 
aversion to the speaker, with wrath, with disdain. 
To err is human. But to gnash with the teeth 
when the claims of Deity are put before the mind, 
that is not human. It is not simply inhuman, it 
is fiendish. I hate the word, but I am obliged to 
use it. Xo one has ever taken a true measure of 
what sinfulness is until he has considered it in 
this, its most terrible form. 

And yet even at this stage of it, we need not 
hang our heads in despair. I am no advocate of 
that shallow theology which is simply a formulat- 
ing of the opinions of sinful fallible men. I hope 
that God will keep me from the insufferable con- 
ceitedness which denies that which transcends my 
very finite understanding. I have no wish to be 
frivolous or to help any of you to a capability of 
jesting in this charnel house of corruption into 
which we have been looking. I want you to feel 
more than ever you have done "the exceeding 
sinfulness of sin," for only then will you be able to 
appreciate the exceeding goodness of God who 
"willeth not the death of a sinner but that all 
should come to repentance." 

44 Where sin abounded grace did superabound." 



34 MAN'S SINFULNESS AND INABILITY. 

No man who looks away from his sin to his 
Saviour need despair, but then he must look to 
him as Saviour, not simply as Teacher, not simply 
as Exemplar, not simply as Physician, as the 
strong Son of God, the only personalized power 
stronger than sin itself. " When the strong man 
armed keepeth his palace his goods are at peace, 
but when a stronger than he cometh upon him, he 
taketh away that wherein he trusteth and divideth 
his spoils.*' If a man can grow out of this condi- 
tion of sinfulness by natural development ; if every 
highly-cultured man be an unsmiling man ; if 
every old man be nearer to the ideal of manhood 
than when he was young ; if these be facts and 
experiences everywhere met with ; then a Teacher, 
a Physician, an example, is needed; but if other- 
wise, if it be seen that man acting on himself, is 
helpless to free himself, helpless to deliver himself 
from the presence and power of sinfulness, and 
from the inward sense of guiltiness, then he who 
is to meet the necessities of the case, must be 
human to understand him, but more than human 
to redeem and deliver him from an enemy stronger 
than man himself. 



m. 

ATONEMENT AXD EXPIATION. 



But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever, 
sat down on the right hand of God. — Hebrews^ x : 12. 

OUR theme this morning is Atonement and 
Expiation. I could not satisfy my sense 
of reverence for that which is peculiarly sacred, if 
I should enter upon our brief consideration of the 
thoughts suggested by these words controversially. 
In days when so many religious people have given 
ov^r sober and steady thinking, and have taken to 
d< >gmatizing, it becomes pastors to /ted their sheep, 
not to set the dog of controversy at them. In 
order to vigor of body there must, in each of as, 
be a good steady appetite for wholesome and 
nutrition- food. And so likewise in order to vigor 
of mind and heart, there must be a good steady 
appetite for such truths, a- tend to enlarge the 
mind, and such fact-, a- tend to vitalize the 
heart. Let us not be scared at name- and words 
which to many have been made odious by being 
used as party watchwords only. Our duty is to 

35 



36 A TONEMENT AND EXPIA T10N. 

try to understand what they mean. Do they 
stand for a truth? Not simply for an opinion. 
An opinion is the product of a man's mind ; a 
truth is the product of the Divine mind. It is in 
accord with the nature of things. Opinions 
change all the time. Truth never changes. Our 
little systems have their day and cease to be. Truth 
is not of a day, or an age, it is from eternity to 
eternity. Our apprehensions of it may change — 
will change if we groiv at all — but the change will 
be, not from larger to smaller, but from less to 
more. The change from larger apprehensions 
to smaller indicates moral deterioration. The 
change from less to more indicates spiritual 
growth. 

These words "atonement" and "expiation" 
have become party words. Consequently many 
persons have never taken the trouble to try to un- 
derstand them. But the man or woman who in 
religion is a mere party man or woman is certain 
to be so full of prejudice that he will shut out 
much truth which his soul needs. That condition 
of mind is not fair nor honest. The man who is 
sincere, open, candid, wants to know the truth as 
far as the limitations of the present time will 
allow. Consequently, he is always a disciple, 
always a learner, becomes assured of some things 
— feels the ground under his feet firm as far as 
he has o;onc — but is still moving onward and 



ATONEMENT AND EXPIATION. 37 

upward. He is a growing man all the time, and 
the sign of growth is an increasing humility, that 
is an increasing teachableness, which amounts to 
the same thing as perpetual youthfulness of spirit. 
He never becomes hardened in intellect or fossil- 
ized in heart. Life is full of interest because of 
the immense area which is still unknown. " At the 
best, our knowledge is but a little island floating 
on and amid an infinite sea of mystery." After 
all, it is the mystery which lies all around the little 
we know which makes our life so unspeakably 
interesting. I am thankful that that which I do 
not know is so immeasurably more than that which 
I know. I am thankful that I am only at the 
beginning of things. I am thankful for the ability 
of recognizing that this life is only a life of 
beginnings, that we know nothing yet in any other 
than a rudimentary way. 

If this be true of life as it is in the lowest 
organism, how much more of the life of man, the 
highest organism of which we know anything? 
Tennyson plucks the little flower out of the cran- 
nied wall, and as he holds it in his linger, addreses 
it in this way : — 

" Flower in the crannied wall, 

I pluck you out of the crannies ; 
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
Little flower — but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 

I should know what God and man is. " 



38 A TONEMENT AND EXPIA T10N. 

If there be no rhapsocty, no exaggeration there, 
if the littte poem be only the ornate dressing up 
of a simple true thought, what shall we say when 
speaking of great facts concerning our own life, 
such facts as these which come to us in these two 
words — ' ' Atonement and Expiation " — words, 
let me say, more for the heart than the intellect? 
I adopt as my own, the language of a thoughtful 
speaker and say — "If, as we believe , Christ is both 
God and the Son of God ; (and to suppose any be- 
ing less than God perfectly manifesting forth God, 
is a contradiction,) if moreover he is Man as well 
as God, and if this Son of God and Man has made a 
sacrifice, in virtue of w 7 hich the sin of the whole 
world is taken away (so far as God himself is 
concerned) , then surely the Atonement effected by 
this mysterious person must itself be a mystery, 
the full import of which w^e cannot hope to 
fathom. No man however wise, or learned, or 
devout, should affect to comprehend it ; no man 
whatever his attainments, should venture to speak 
of it save with modesty and reverence, and with a 
profound conviction that he knows it "but in 
part," that he sees it but as "through a glass, 
darkly." I adopt this language as my own. It 
exactly expresses my own feelings. Atonement 
is not a New Testament word. It belongs special- 
ly to the Old Jewish dispensation. It is 
represented by a Hebrew word wdiich means to 



ATONEMENT AXD EXPIATIOX. 39 

cover up. When the old Hebrew did that which 
was appointed to put himself into right relations 
towards God — when he offered the sacrifice which 
meant that his will was to do God's will, then he 
was said to be atoned — that is, brought into 
oneness with God. In the sacrifice ofiered, he 
regarded himself, his blood, that is to say his life, 
as ofiered in consecration to God. He knew, 
however, that this sacrifice had no meaning in 
itself. It stood for another great sacrifice which 
one day should be ofiered, a perfect sacrifice, the 
sacrifice of a spotless and sinless one who should 
be his representative, who should do for him what 
he could not do for himself. But this symbolic act 
of sacrifice of his did something for his heart and 
conscience, which required to be done. The 
devout Isiaelite could not rest until he had done 
something to indicate that he was not willingly a 
rebel against God. His heart was pained, his 
conscience was uneasy, so long as he had not 
performed an act which indicated the sorrow of his 
soul, and the submission of his will. The mere 
general proclamation that God was merciful and 
gracious, was not enough. If only Jehovah had 
himself appointed something to be done, how 
gladly would he do it, if only He had declared 
that there was BOme deed, the doing of which, 
indicated that lie was at one with the man who had 
sinned, and the man at one with Him, how gladly 



40 A TONEMENT AND EXPIA TIOK 

would the devout Israelite do it. And so, in 
answer to the necessities of this nature of ours, 
Jehovah appointed a sacrifice which at one and 
the same time, should be prophetic and expiatory. 
The devout Israelite oiFered the appointed sacrifice 

— it satisfied his heart, it appeased his conscience, 
and he went to his home rejoicing that he was at 
peace with God. 

I want that we should note these simple things : 

— 1st, that the sacrifice offered was required by 
the necessities of this nature of ours, which is 
never satisfied by a mere declaration apart from 
an act. " Lord what wilt thou have me to do?" 
was the cry of the awakened soul. " What shall 
I do to be saved?" was the question of the aroused 
jailor of Philippi. This is human nature all the 
world over. And they who affirm that a man's 
soul ought to be satisfied by mere inferences as to 
the nature of Deity, by mere inferences as to the 
mercy of God, can never have sufficiently consid- 
ered what human nature is. No soul but the 
meanest could be satisfied with a mere verbal 
declaration of this nature — " I forgive you, but I 
don't want to have anything to do with you." 
The little child in the household would teach us a 
better theology than that. If the father says, " I 
forgive you " and then coolly turns his back on 
the child, is it satisfied, does it feel the forgive- 
ness ? Does it realize it ? No ; it realizes it when 



ATONEMENT AND EXPIATION. 41 

the father puts his arms around its neck, and the 
child its arms around the father's neck, and the 
kisses of the father bring the tears. There must 
be an act of forgiveness as well as words of for- 
giveness, or our nature is not satisfied. And all 
theories to the contrary proceed on a very shallow 
and inadequate apprehension of what human na- 
ture is. The heart and conscience of the devout 
Israelite demanded some act which breathed for- 
giveness, but more than forgiveness — restoration 
to communion — and the act of sacrifice was both 
these. 

2nd, I want that we should notice farther that 
the act must be an appointed one. It must indi- 
cate God's will, not the self-will of a sinner. 
Self-will is the root of all sin. And so, even an 
act of worship which indicated the perpetuation of 
self-will would only be a continuation of rebellion. 
That is the explanation of the difference in the 
acts of the first two men of whom we ever read as 
offering sacrifice, Cain and Abel? Abel's offering 
is represented as being acceptable, that of Cain as 
not acceptable. AVhy ? Abel offered that which 
was appointed to be offered. Cain offered what 
he chose. The one man honored the will of God 
as supreme, the other honored his own will. We 
can never understand an act until we get down to 
the principle which is in it. When the sinning 
man has done the appointed thing, then the heart 



42 A TONEMENT AND EXPIA T10N. 

and conscience are satisfied; they are assured, 
because God himself has appointed the act. There 
is no satisfaction to heart and conscience where 
there is no assurance. 

Remembering these two ideas, we can have no 
very serious difficulty as to the meaning of 
sacrifices in the Old Testament times. The Crea- 
tor knew the necessities of our nature better than 
the theorists know them, and he met those 
necessities in the appointment of the mosiac 
sacrifices. 

But human nature is the same now as then. It 
is conscious of sinfulness. The consciousness is 
jilways a troublesome one ; it may even be acutely 
painful ; yea, it may become positively agonizing. 
It has never been satisfactory to any but torpid 
souls to issue simple, general declarations of the 
Divine mercifulness. And, especially, when 
mercifulness is made to mean easy good nature, 
w T hich does not much discern the difference between 
good and evil, and does not much care for the 
difference. Any man who thinks, perceives that 
on this earth the most selfish, the most useless, 
and the most unreliable people in any community, 
are these easy good-natured people who don't care 
how things go, so that they are not disturbed. 
To take the idea of mercifulness which belongs to 
these, and transfer it to God, is to give men a 
Deity for which the most earnest among them 



A TONEMENT AND EXPIA TIOX. 43 

cannot feel even respect. Men have in them the 
intuition that the nature of God must contain, 
that which is represented to us by the words, 
Justice and Righteousness. They have an intuition 
that He cannot be man's enemy, for He preserves 
him in life, and loads him with benefits. They 
have also a distinct recognition that a Righteous 
Being — a Just Being, cannot move down from his 
Righteousness and Justice — cannot compromise 
it, cannot be ashamed of it, can do nothing to 
deny it. He must be at unity with Himself. 
Abraham felt all this when he exclaimed, " Shall 
not the Judge of all the earth do right. Job felt 
it when he said, "I know that my Redeemer 
liveth." Paul, too, when he exclaimed, " Let 
God be true though every man be a liar. " 

The question forces itself upon every earnest 
man's soul, sooner or later — How shall this 
Righteous, this Holy God, who cannot change 
from his holiness, be still just, and yet enter into 
fellowship with his men and women who are all 
confessedly sinners and rebels? He loves their 
humanity, for he is the Author of it. But He is, 
and must ever be, at war with their sinfulness. 
There is the problem. It is too deep for you and 
me. Man has free-will. It cannot be forced. 
How shall God and man be made one again? We 
cannot look into the profundities of this question. 
The theories of the theologians as to Atonement 



44 A TONE ME NT A ND EX PI A TION. 

and Expiation all fall short of a full explanation. 
That being so, is it not wise to take the simple 
revealed facts, and leave the theories alone. No 
one but He who can look into human life, and all 
life, as it is from the beginning of the Creation, 
till now, and on endlessly ; no one but He who can 
see our relation to other beings, and other worlds, 
can fathom the theme. But Scripture has taught 
me this — and I am sure that I have been willing 
to learn ; I am sure that I have been willing to 
have no opinions of my own, and no views that 
might intercept my clear recognition of w T hat it does 
teach, it has taught me that it was necessary that 
Jesus should offer Himself as a sacrifice in order 
that He might deliver us from " the captivities 
of evil. " It was necessary that Jesus should 
offer Himself as a sacrifice in order that the gov- 
ernment of God should be so administered that 
there might be no stain on the Divine purity, and 
yet the man who turns Godward might have full 
and free pardon and deliverance from the evil 
which is in him, and its consequences. It has 
taught me that it was necessary that Jesus the 
Christ should put Himself at the head of our 
humanity and be its Representative and do for us 
completely and perfectly what w T e can do only in 
a very imperfect and rudimentary way. 

It has taught me that He came not to alter the 
will of God — not to set it aside — but perfectly 



ATONE ME XT AXD EXPIATION. 4o 

to do it — and that no one but Jesus has done that 
will perfectly on this earth. It has taught me, 
that when the Eternal Father of our Spirit, saw 
his will perfectly done on this Earth, He made 
the One who did it the custodian of all who could 
not do it — gave them into his hand — made them 
his possession and his heritage — and so we are 
Christ's. TTe belong to Him. We are his people. 
And neither can the sins of this world slay our 
immortal spirits, nor can the terrors of the dark 
side of the other world touch our real life, if we 
cling to Him. That much Scripture has taught 
me. And my heart is satisfied. My conscience 
is satisfied. And if my intellect refuses to be 
satisfied I don't care. It has never yet been 
satisfied and probably never will be — because we 
can know only in part. 

But the intellectual light of to-day will disap- 
pear before the intellectual light of to-morrow, as 
the stars disappear when the sun rises, swallowed 
up in the brighter light. Man is not all intellect. 
There is something more precious in him than 
intellect, although this proud, haughty part of his 
nature, like an ill-bred and unrefined man, is ever 
asserting itself as supreme. Religious teaching, 
which is simply addressed to the intellectual in 
man, may make disputants and controversialists 
and conceited sectarians, "ever learning and 
never coming 1o the knowledge of the truth," but 



46 A TONEMENT AND EXPIA TION. 

in order to wake the whole of our nature into 
healthy life, we need no diminished Christ, no 
Christ reduced to the stature of a fallen man, a 
man who was not here yesterday and w T ill not be 
here tomorrow. We need something else than a 
candle, yea, than a thousand candles of man's 
manufacture, if we are to make the flowers grow 
in our gardens, the trees to be bright with foliage, 
and heavy with fruitage, we need the full orbed 
Sun. And so too, if we are to have in our 
churches, Christian men and Christian women, not 
simply religious controversalists and religious 
wranglers, we need the full-orbed Christ ; He who 
spake, as never man spake, to the Intellect; He 
w T ho whispered to the Conscience and it ceased its 
upbraidings ; He, who in the might of His unbend- 
ing integrity, stood before Pilate and Herod the 
world's Judges, and even they found no fault in 
Him; He, who on Calvary, mutely appealed as 
none other ever did or ever will to the human 
heart, and that heart wept in penitence and joy 
and gladness. For w T e cannot refuse to recognize 
this, that those who think only of the Sacrifice 
which Jesus made of Himself as a manifestation of 
the Love of God, may only too easily come to 
rely on that Love without responding to it. In 
that case, so far as the individual is concerned, the 
greatest of all facts ever revealed to the human 
mind is outside of us. It is something looked at, 



ATONEMENT AND EXPIATION. 47 

not appropriated. Every unappropriated good 
necessarily becomes a condemnation. The soul, 
not capable of responding with its love to God's 
love, is in a lost state now, and must, by whatso- 
ever discipline and affliction God may send, be 
brought into another state before it can see the 
Kingdom of God. 

I do not wonder that the great soul of the 
Apostle of the Gentiles should test the condition 
of every man by this simple but all-sufficient test. 
Does the love of his heart respond to the wondrous 
love which Jesus has shown towards men ? I do 
not wonder that the holy indignation within him 
should glow and burn until it voiced itself in 
these words, "If any man love not the Lord 
Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema/" 

You and I, brethren, need not concern ourselves 
about Adam and his sin, and its consequences, 
that is all done and done with. The question for 
each man, to whom the gospel of the grace of God 
is preached, is this, "why is there no loving re- 
sponse in my heart to the love which is in Christ 
to me?" If there be one truth taught in the Xew 
Testament more clearly and more frequently than 
another, it seems to me to be this — that Jesus 
Christ came into this world to put away sin by the 
sacrifice of himself. Is it not enough? Is it not 
what we need? In this turbulent world, this 
world of strife, this world of bitter enemies and 



48 A TONEMENT AND EXPIA TIOK 

false friends, this world of uncertainty and change, 
this world in which we know not what a day may 
bring forth, this world in which so many prefer 
the fellowship of devils to the fellowship of God 
and good men, it must surely be a necessity for 
the heart to have some centre where it can rest 
and find peace. For if the heart beat rest the 
man is strong and brave in trials and afflictions 
which ruffle the outside. That centre is given us 
in Him who has taught us all of our Father God 
we know. And it seems to me our true attitude 
is that expressed in the words of the hymn : — 

"My faith would lay her hand 

On that dear head of thine, 
While like a penitent I stand 

And there confess my sin. 

My soul looks back to see 

The burdens thou did'st bear, 
When hanging on the accursed tree, 

And trusts her guilt was there. 

Believing, we rejoice 

To see the curse remove; 
We bless the Lamb with cheerful voice 

And sing his bleeding love." 



IV. 
THE DIVINE HELPER. 



And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Com- 
forter, that He may abide with you for ever. — Jok?i, xiv : 16. 

OUR thoughts this morning are all contained 
in the one thought of the " Divine Helper." 
In speaking within such limitations as are forced 
upon me, I have preferred that general title, for 
the Holy Spirit of God to others, because it keeps 
closer to the meaning of the original word, than 
any other. The word used by the Apostle John, 
to designate this Divine Helper, is translated both 
in the Authorized and Revised Versions of the 
New Testament as Comforter. Literally the word 
means " One called alongside for help." Bearing 
in mind that this is the radical idea, I propose to 
ask your attention to a few considerations which 
may be of some practical service to inquiring 
minds. Only sunirestions can be made. A Ions; 
course of sermons would be necessary for anything 
like a respectful expounding of the Scriptures, 
w T hich bear on this theme. And even then the 

49 



50 TEE DIVINE HELPER. 

dimly perceived but unspeakable would still be 
the greater. For, in order to growth in knowledge, 
and growth in spirituality, we have to force our 
proud intellectuality to its knees — yea, if in true 
Eastern fashion, it lies prone on the earth biting 
the dust, the attitude is far more becoming than 
that of erect self-willed ignorance with its innocent 
absurdity, "I don't believe in anything that I 
cannot understand," the only fitting reply to 
which innocent absurdity is, " Then you believe 
nothing at all, not even your own existence, 
for most assuredly you do not understand it." 
When the nature of that Source of life, from which 
all spiritual life comes is the theme, we bow our 
heads and listen to anyone who can teach us as 
much as we are capable of receiving, and there is 
but One who is competent to teach us authorita- 
tively. If we have humility enough to sit at His 
feet, and learn of Him, we shall eventually arrive 
at such perceptions as are necessary to enable us 
to live a life of practical Christian usefulness. 
That is all that our God requires from us. 

The first thing we have to recognize, when we 
think on a theme of this kind, is that man has a 
body and is a spirit. Therefore he is capable of 
thought on spiritual things — things above the 
material. If he were not a spirit, he would not be 
capable of such thought. As the Rev. E. II. 
Sears, in his helpful book, "The Fourth Gospel 



THE DIYIXE HELPER. 51 

the Heart of Christ,*' says, ki Man is natural and 
supernatural. By his natural organs he is placed 
in open and necessary relations with time and 
space. By his immortal faculties he is placed in 
necessary relations with a supersensible world. 
All men have intuitive notions 
of spiritual and Divine things. Into every soul 
comes an influx of the supernatural, and breathings 
from the Lord which are deeper than all human 
teachings, and without which all human teachings 
were in vain. Were it not for these inspirations, 
the eternal life might as well be preached to trees 
and animals as to human beings." We have to 
recognize that we are taught from within as well 
as from without. We have to recognize clearly 
and distinctly that our life is not self-originated 
and self-derived — that we are not independent, 
but dependent beings — that we live because 
it is God's will that we should live — that 
underneath our mind, supporting and sustain- 
ing it, is the Divine Mind — that our personality 
needs to account for it another personality — that 
thus our life is permissive and not entirely or 
chiefly in our own keeping. These truths have 
to be recognized before we can touch this theme. 
Now, would it not be an altogether strange and 
unaccountable thing if the Author of our Bcin^ 
had so closed it up that lie could gain no entrance 
to it? Would it not be a strange tiling if He had 



52 THE DIVINE HELPER. 

so made us as that we could really exist altogether 
cut off from Him ? Would not that indicate that 
He made us in sport? That we were mere toys, 
to be thrown aside after a while? That He 
created us for some other reason than that we 
might hold fellowship with Himself, and enter 
into the uses, and joys, and delights of His 
Universe ? "Would not the Creator have volunta- 
rily destroyed the unity of his Creation if he had 
made us so that we could exist independently of 
Himself? In the light of these and such like 
considerations the revealed facts of inspiration and 
spiritual influence become not probable simply, 
but necessary. 

The idea of the olden time, " There is a spirit 
in man and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth 
him understanding," is in agreement with what we 
see must be. 

Now when in the development of revelation as 
given us in the Scriptures, we find a Trinity in 
the Godhead, it naturally starts discussion and de- 
bate, because at first it seems to militate against 
the idea of the Unity of the Godhead. And that 
idea seems to us very necessary and very precious 
if we are to be kept from going in the old heathen 
direction of polytheism. But the more we think 
of it the more we perceive that a mere solitary 
oneness is not unity. Unity implies and demands 
something of variety. The unity of our own na- 



THE DIVIXE HELPEB. 53 

ture demands it ; the unity of Creation demands 
it. The idea of Trinity in Unity disturbs us. 
And so, instead of accepting the fact, and culti- 
vating a modesty and reverence which forbids us 
to dogmatize on facts beyond our reach, we begin 
to try and get the fact put into some form in 
which we can understand it. And so in time, 
human speculations and opinions come to occupy 
the place of Divine Revelation. 

I acknowledge that it is natural for men to 
reason and argue and speculate and form opinions. 
A living mind is full of movement and activity. 
And the movement and activity within it are suf- 
ficiently accounted for only by the recognition of 
a Power external to the mind moving it. Does it 
not, however, become us to recognize that great 
spiritual truths, which out-measure the capacity of 
all human minds, have never originated in them 
and are not to be explored by them? And no 
controversies have been more useless, certainly 
none more irreverent, than those in which mere 
debaters have occupied themselves in settling the 
nature of that Trinity which is revealed as in the 
Godhead of the Creator. 

I do not propose to be drawn into this theme as 
a controversalist. My business is very simple — 
io make such suggestions as shall help inquirers. 
In prosecuting that business, I would ask you to 
recognize that the human mind needs for its own 



54 THE DIVINE HELPER 

satisfaction the revelation of an Original Source 
of Life, corresponding in its powers to that which 
is objectively infinite. It needs that that Original 
Source of Life should so limit itself that it can 
be known. 

It needs further that being known under limi- 
tations, it should still be able to so distribute itself 
that all can be visited, directed, helped. There 
cannot be any doubt of this triune necessity. Is 
it not provided for, in the revelation of the nature 
of Godhead — in the three terms used as express- 
ing Deity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? 

I admit that there can be no analogies in the 
material creation to illustrate this great fact. 
Material nature is too unelastic, too stiff, too for- 
mal to be used in this connection. And yet is 
there not something which looks towards this 
truth in what we know of lightf Men sometimes 
have thought that they had the laugh on the old 
historian and legislator, Moses, because in the 
book of Genesis the record intimates that lio'ht 
was created before there was any sun in the 
heavens. Accordingly all superficial minds, from 
Voltaire, the genius of sarcasm, down to many of 
the knowing youths of our own day, have made 
merry over this remarkably ignorant old world 
hero. Unfortunately, however, for Voltaire and 
those of his disposition and temper, science pa- 
tiently marching on from fact to fact, has event- 



THE DIVINE HELPER. 55 

ually arrived at the conviction that light is in its 
nature entirely independent of the sun. " It is a 
vibration of the ether in which the sun is in our 
time, no doubt, the chief agent, but which may be 
produced by the action of many causes." And so 
of other discoveries which tend to show that Moses 
knew what Science has only recently found out. 
How he knew it is a question to which we wait for 
an answer. 

Xow take these facts about light. First, it was 
diffused, then gathered up, as far as our world is 
concerned, into the sun, and yet, by the sun, it is 
distributed everywhere, so that every flower gets 
its portion and every spring blossom is what it is 
in beauty and fragrance because of the influence 
upon it, of an orb more than ninety millions of 
miles away. To my mind there is something in 
this fact which looks as though it might be used 
to help us in our thought on this theme. I do not 
call it a simile or metaphor or any kind of an illus- 
tration, only a helpful suggestion in the region of 
material things. 

Still, if it be a fact of our every day life, a fact 
so common as to lose its wonderfulness to all but 
the most reflective and thoughtful minds, that 
every tiny bud and flower all through the earth 
is what it is because of the influence on it of an 
orb more than ninety millions of miles away, are 
we asking you to receive anything absurd, any- 



56 THE DIVINE HELPER. 

thing impossible or improbable, when we aver 
that it is revealed that every soul of man every- 
where, owes its best thonghts, its purest impulses, 
its noblest aspirations to the influences of the 
Spirit of God upon it? And as personality in 
man demands and proves personality in God, so 
these influences of the Spirit of God upon the soul 
are personal. They are such influences as a 
person produces on a person. Silent as the light, 
they are none the less powerful because of their 
silentness. In the quietude of the soul that Holy 
Spirit of God is operating, as our Lord taught us, 
convincing of Sin, of Righteousness, of Judgment, 
creating within us, that is to say, a sense of Sin, a 
sense of Righteousness, a sense too that the pres- 
ent order of things is not to last forever, that 
there is a period when the great decision will be 
made, that there shall not continuously be this 
present confusion of Sin and Righteousness, of 
Truth and Falsehood, the Bad often lauding it 
over the Good. There is in us all a sense that 
this cannot last, that it must come to an end. 
And this sense of sin in us, this sense of Right- 
eousness, this feeling that there must be a judg- 
ment which shall reveal and deliver, is the sign of 
the action of the Holy Spirit of God on our 
spirits. 

Who of us does not see how much of dignity 



THE DIVIDE HELPER. 57 

and worth is added to this life of ours by this 
revelation that the spirit of man is ever open to 
the influences of the Holy Spirit of God ? TThy 
can man think thoughts that never occur to an 
animal ? TTliy can he write books like Milton's 
Paradise Lost, Dante's De Coelo et Inferno, that 
wondrous book of Job, those ever-inspiring 
Psalms of David, Tennyson's In Memoriam, 
Longfellow's Psalm of Life, uncounted volumes 
on a life above the material life ? Because he is a 
spirit. Because being a spirit, the push of the 
Eternal Spirit is ever on his, moving him, stirring 
him into thought and feeling, making him aspire, 
suggesting prayer, which is only devout aspiration. 
This is why. We all of us have done our best to 
sink into the animal life and find our satisfaction 
there and have failed. We have failed because 
our God would not let us succeed. By the 
influences of His Holy Spirit He has been brooding 
over us, moving in us, keeping our conscience in 
life, stirring up our feelings. The reason why the 
sap in all the trees is being vitalized just now and 
sending out bud and leaf, is because the beams of 
the sun are in more energetic operation within. 
And the reason why any of us have at any time 
been stirred into religious thought, and devout 
aspiration, is because the energetic influences of 
the Spirit of God have gained access to our minds 
and hearts. The light has been poured into us 



58 THE DIVINE HELPER 

from an unseen hand. It is because of the 
undying energy of this Holy Spirit of God that 
we have any devout thoughts, any filial feelings 
Godward, any disposition to pray, any delight in 
praise, any faith Christ ward, any love to our 
fellow-men. It is not oar doing ; it is His. 
" Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, 
saith the Lord." What have we that we have not 
received*? What have we originated? Nothing 
but sin. Everything else has its root in the Holy 
Spirit of God. Our ability of perceiving that 
Jesus is the Christ of God is of God. No man 
can call Jesus Lord, but by the Holy Spirit. Of 
all gifts of God, this practically is the greatest. 
There is nothing good in human nature that is not 
traceable to it. 

Now, this era in which we live, is peculiarly the 
dispensation of the Spirit. The New Testament 
seems to indicate that while there is a general, 
what we may be allowed to call a natural, creating 
and sustaining energy of the Spirit of God, for all 
men, in all places and times, according to their 
ability of receiving it, there is in this era since the 
coming into this world's life of the Christ of God 
a much more copious exercise of Divine energy 
upon the soul of man, so much so that " where sin 
abounded, grace did much more abound." No 
one can doubt this, that since the advent of the 
One who stands before us as God's Christ, the 



THE DIVINE HELPER. 59 

world has had new energy in it, new movement, 
new life, purer ambition, loftier aspiration. 
That " power from on high" which was promised 
to the Apostles of Christianity, and which made 
itself specially felt at Pentecost, was not an 
exceptional gift to them. It belongs to all who 
could receive it. I believe that we should under- 
stand this truth more if we were less self-dependent 
and less dependent on material things, than we 
ever can understand it in the present condition of 
society. The greatest as well as the best man, is 
he who has the largest receptivity. An Apostle 
speaks of the old man and the new man. The 
new man is the Christian man. The old man is 
the mere selfish materialist, the man who is the 
centre and circumference of his own world. 
"When a man is brought to act from new motives, 
new principles, and aims at a new and higher life, 
when his own birth and death are not the bounds 
of his horizon, but he perceives the necessity for 
Eternity in order to develop the larger life which 
is in him, and of which he is conscious, is he not 
a new man ? Is it not clear that he is born from 
above? There is nothing in the flesh to account 
for these new views and aspirations. There is 
nothing in the animal to suggest to his mind the 
spiritual. There is nothing in the finite to suggest 
the infinite. AVhy has he these thoughts and 
feelings, these cravings and aspirations, these 



60 THE DIVINE HELPER. 

dissatisfied longings, these soarings beyond and 
above the terrestrial ? He has them because of the 
visitings to his Spirit of the Holy Spirit of God. 
And if he does not yield to them, if he resists them, 
if he puts them among dreams, if he tries to rid 
himself of them, if he goes into societies where 
nothing of them will be recognized, if he exercises 
himself in the opposite of these, doing everything 
he can to materialize and sensualize his mind, 
he is fighting against God ; to use Apostolic 
speech he is grieving the Spirit of God, he is try- 
ing to put out the fire lit within him ; he is doing 
what in him lies to " quench the Spirit." Thus 
the case is represented to us by our Lord and 
His Apostles. 

Their teaching explains to us the meaning ot 
our inward dissatisfactions. This nature of ours 
must ever be a problem to us, "the flesh lust- 
ing against the Spirit and the Spirit against the 
flesh," a problem insoluble until we recog- 
nize that the nature of God is round about 
us, that " in Him we live, and move, and have our 
being," as much and as really as the flowers and 
birds live, and move, and have their being in the 
sun-impregnated atmosphere. Then Ave begin to 
understand why conscience will not rest, why the 
heart within us is not at peace, why the mind 
cannot be kept from thinking, why unsyllabled 
prayers move noiselessly within our souls. It is 



TEE DIVINE HELPER, 61 

the voice of the Holy Spirit within saying to us, 
" This is not your rest ; there remaineth a rest for 
the people of God." 

That which M. de Laveleye has written of so- 
ciety in general is true of every individual life : 
" There is in human affairs one order which is the 
best. That order is not always the one which 
exists ; but it is the order which should exist for 
the greatest good of humanity. God knows it 
and wills it ; man's duty it is to discover and 
establish it." 



V. 

THE WITXESSIXG CHURCH. 



Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. — 
Ephesians, i : 23. 

THE questions, what is a Christian church? 
what its relation to the Christ from whom 
it takes its name ? what the conditions of mem- 
bership in it? what its relation to society in 
general, and all such questions, have to be 
answered in the light of the Person and work of 
Him who is its Head. The Church is called the 
body of Christ. Through his body a man holds 
communication with the outer world and works in 
and on that outer world. So through His church 
Jesus the Christ acts upon society, upon men in 
general. I do not say that this is the only me- 
dium through which He works and acts, but it is 
the principal medium. A church, then, must be 
organically fitted to express the mind and will of 
Christ. Every thing ecclesiastical which is not so 
fitted is an encumbrance, a hindrance, and not a 

help. 

62 



THE WITNESSING CHURCH. 63 

So far as any church expresses only the mind of 
man in any age or generation, so far it is defec- 
tive. Ecclesiastical constitutions exist in which 
our Lord has no direct and immediate influence. 
There is >o much put between Him and His 
church that His aspect to the members must be 
like that of a man at the small end of an inverted 
telescope. Everything which comes between the 
soul of man and the Christ which is not transpa- 
rent, yea, which has not in it the power of 
bringing this Christ nearer to the soul, is so much 
hindrance to a human spirit in its strivings God- 
ward. 

In inquiring as to the nature of the Church of 
Christ, the following ideas demand recognition : — 

1. Christ Jesus is its head; its sole head, its 
source of doctrine, of law and of order. He only 
has authority. " One is your Master even Christ, 
and all ye are brethren." 

Of course in every society there must be a 
head. Even a mob must have a leader. There 
must in every society be law and order. Other- 
wise there can be no peace and no progress. The 
self-will of the individual becomes everything. 
And in such a state of things there can be no co- 
operated movement. The simpler any organiza- 
tion is the more catholic it is, and the more 
competent for the highest ends. The sole head- 
ship of Christ in the Church is the basis doctrine 



64 THE WITNESSING CHURCH. 

of all law and order. That headship was distinctly 
acknowledged by the Apostles. Passages from 
the Gospels and Epistles might be quoted if it 
were necessary, to prove how jealously this head- 
ship was guarded, both by our Lord himself and 
by his Apostles. " Xo servant can serve two mas- 
ters," is our Lord's warning to those who would 
try the experiment of a double allegiance. 

In the Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul almost 
indignantly repudiates the idea of one member of 
the church claiming authority over another when 
he asks: ""Who art thou that judgest another 
man's servant ? To his own master he standeth or 
falleth." In the light of such passages as these, it 
is strange that such abuses as exist should have 
crept into the ecclesiastical world. Lordship in 
the Church, says TTycliffe, is forbidden, brother- 
hood is commanded. I know of nothing of more 
practical importance than that we should never 
forget that Headship and Authority in the Church 
are vested in One and in One only. Let us not 
abuse the idea by inferring that there is no 
Authority, and that men can do in the church as 
the whim takes them. Nothing could be farther 
from the truth of things than such an inference. 
There are law and order in the Church, but the 
law is not derived from man, and the order is not 
such as he has instituted. Therefore is the law so 
sacred and the order so impressive. Its very sim- 



THE WITNESSING CHURCH. 65 

plicity may mislead us ; not having our eyes open to 
perceive that the simplest ideas are parental, that 
they contain in them no end of fruitiul and legiti- 
mate applications. There cannot be room for a 
doubt, that our Lord, in giving two sacraments, 
and in instituting a ministry, intended a visible 
Church on earth. There can be as little room for 
doubt that He intended that the acknowledgment 
of His sole headship over them, should be the first 
and chief sign of membership in that church. 
The man who has no ability of owning the master- 
ship of any one but himself and his own will, has 
no place and can have no place in the Christian 
Church. He is self-excluded. 

If we are willing to submit to be taught by 
Christ, to be guided by Him, to be controlled by 
Him, we are of his Church. That willingness is 
God's call in us. And whatever special experiences 
we may have or may not have, they are entirely 
unreliable, entirely deceitful indeed, if we have 
not that willingness. Having that willingness 
however inexperienced we may be, however 
uninstructed, however spiritually dull and incapa- 
ble, or however richly endowed with the capacity 
of spiritual perception, we are without doubt 
under the influences of the Spirit of God and are of 
that numberless number who constitute the church 
of Christ. Let me say plainly that genuine self- 
depreciation is no disqualification for membership 



66 THE WITNESSING CHURCH. 

m 

in the church of Christ ; rather is it of the nature 
of qualification; the consciousness of "not he- 
ing good enough," is no disqualification but 
otherwise ; if that feeling be geuuine and not 
assumed, it is an element in self-knowledge. The 
feeling ' I shall never be able to be consistent ' is 
no disqualification, or the whole membership 
would have to step down and out. Christ is able 
to keep us from falling away from Himself, and that 
is the crucial thing. Our ability is not self- 
derived, it is imparted. Willingness to be led 
and guided, and saved from sin and its 
consequences by Him who is the Head of the 
Church — this is the essential thing in qualification. 
Without this willingness we have no place and no 
right in the Church of Christ. 

2. The membership of the Church is a brother- 
hood. If we have the ability of the subordination 
of our own wills to the will of Christ," the practical 
result will be, that we shall be of the same feeling 
and disposition as all others dowered with the 
same ability. The spirit of brotherhood will be 
in us. For when anything of the love of God 
enters the heart, the love of man comes with it. 
The one is the result and the sign of the other. 
And the love of man is not some sentimental 
feeling which is here to day and gone tomorrow. 
It is that disposition which shows itself in 
sympathy and goodwill, which is pained when it 



THE WITNESSING CHURCH. 67 

pains others, which seeks to be united #vith others 
in all such acts of generous helpfulness as are 
feasible. It is the diametric opposite of the spirit 
of judgment and accusation. It takes note of the 
Master's words, " Judge not that ye be not judged ; 
condemn not that ye be not condemned. " When 
circumstances forbid it to do good it resolutely 
refuses to do evil to any man. If it can find a 
good motive for an action it refuses to believe in 
a bad one. It seeks to be in unity with all who 
in sincerity submit to our Lord Jesus Christ. It 
is ever mindful of the Savior's prayer, " That they 
all may be one as thou, Father, art in me and I in 
thee, that they may be one in us, that the world 
may know that thou has sent me." To be brothers 
of all who will have us for brothers, brothers of 
all "who name the name of Christ and depart 
from iniquity," this is the aim, the hope, the 
ambition of the true Christian. Our minds and 
hearts need society. God has so constituted us 
that we cannot stand alone. The individual as an 
individual is not God's idea of man but the 
individual in family relationships. We know this 
because God has made family relationship 
necessary to the perpetuation of the human race. 
Yea, he speaks of the church as a family, "Of 
whom the whole family in heaven and earth is 
named." So a disciple of Christ standing apart 
in his individualism is not God's idea of a Christian, 



68 THE WITNESSING CHURCH 

but a disciple in the family, one of many. 
" Members of one body, every act of separation 
and self-will, is an offence against that body and 
against its head." " One is your master, even 
Christ, and all ye are brethen," this brief sentence 
covers the whole ground. All else in practical 
church life is included in, and derived from, these 
two abilities, the ability of the subordination of 
our own self-will to the will of Christ, and the 
ability of persistent untiring brotherliness in 
speech and conduct. 

It is necessary to add that the members of the 
Church of Christ are called by other names than 
this of " brethren." This indicates the tone and 
temper of their minds. They are called 
66 believers " and "disciples," which words indi- 
cate their standing towards their Lord. They are 
called "saints," that is, separated ones, which word 
implies that they refuse to be controlled by the 
world's ideas and fashions, whenever those ideas 
and fashions militate against the simplicity 
and sincerity of their allegiance to Christ. It 
is necessary to add further that the Church of 
Christ is not democratic, but theocratic. The 
people are not the fountain of law and order. 
They have no right to affirm who shall be the head 
of the Church ; that is settled — settled forever. 
Nor have they any right to say what truths shall 
be taught, and what doctrines affirmed ; that also 



THE WITNESSING CHURCH. 09 

is settled and settled forever. The Church of 
Christ is a witnessing church. " Ye are my wit- 
nesses," saith the Lord. " Thus it is written that 
the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the 
dead the third day ; and that repentance and re- 
mission of sins should be preached in his name 
unto all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 
And ye are witnesses of these things." This from 
St. Luke. And again in the beginning of the 
Acts of the Apostles: "But ye shall receive 
power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you, 
and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem 
and in all Judea and Samaria and unto the utter- 
most parts of the earth." 

The Church of Christ is not charged with cre- 
ating or inventing anything. It has to be the 
witness to the facts and truths revealed concern- 
ing God and man in and through Jesus Christ. It 
is charged with the grand and glorious responsi- 
bility of taking these revealed facts and truths to 
all who bear the name of man, from one end of 
the earth to the other. For God Almighty never 
gives a man a truth for his own private use. 
Every revealed truth belongs to the whole hu- 
manity. Wherever the sun shines there it is 
God's will that His revealed truth should shine. 
It is necessary that we should distinctly recognize 
that though these facts and truths may suggest 
views, and start opinions in men's minds, yet that 



70 THE WITNESSING CHURCH. 

those views and opinions are not the foundation 
on which the Church is built. Other foundation 
can no man lay than that is laid, Jesus Christ. 
Endless confusion has arisen in the ecclesiastical 
world from a non-recognition of the distinction 
between men's views and opinions on the facts and 
truths of Holy Writ, and the facts and truths 
themselves. However many sects and denomina- 
tions you may have, there is but one Church of 
Christ. However multitudinous the views and 
opinions of men on religious themes, there is but 
" one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and 
Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and 
in you all." The Church derives its facts and 
truths, its law and order from Christ, not from 
the people — it is theocratic, not democratic. 

This also must be added, that the church is the 
dwelling place of the Holy Spirit of God, which 
fact is evidence by these fruits of the Spirit 
which hang thick and threefold upon it, as upon a 
tree of life. "The fruits of the Spirit are love, 
joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, 
faithfulness, meekness, temperance (or self-con- 
trol.)" These abound in every true Christian 
Church. 

We must not omit to add, that the Church is 
Christ's great Teacher to the nations. The last 
great command to the Apostles runs thus: "Go 
ye and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing 



THE WITNESSING CHURCH. 71 

them into the name of the Father and of the Son 
and of the Holy Ghost ; teaching them to observe 
all things whatsoever I commanded you ; and lo, 
I am with you alway, even unto the end of the 
world." If the Church abdicates this position, or 
does not recognize it, it lives outside its commis- 
sion and opportunity. I venture to say that there 
is no other power adequate to educate the mind of 
a nation or a man. I need not remind you how 
far short of its opportunity and commission the 
Church of Christ has fallen, when we take into 
consideration its relation, not only to individuals, 
but to nations. The truth of the Gospel has even 
been so used as to promote selfishness. Many a 
man has been taught that the beginning, middle, 
and end of Christianity is to save his own soul. 
Of course that is the beginning of Christianity, but 
it is not the middle and end. When once a man 
has been brought into right relations toward God, 
by the acceptation of Jesus Christ as his Redeemer, 
Lord, and Master, practically he is brought into 
new relations towards men. He begins to recos;- 
nize that he owes duties to the family, and to the 
nation. He begins to feel the misery and mean- 
ness of a life which lives to get and not to give. 
His eyes are opened to see that this is the kind of 
life most antagonistic towards the life of God. 
The parasite on the tree which drains away its life 
but adds nothing to the life of the tree, is the (it 



72 THE WITNESSING CHURCH. 

symbol of the man who gets everything out of the 
nation he lives in, and gives back nothing so far 
as his own will and purpose is set to do it. The 
Church's commission includes the teachership of 
the nation in all highest things pertaining to 
national life. 

And lastly, the church is the beginning of that 
permanent society which God is organizing to 
embody and express his will. The Book of the 
Revelation of St John gives intimations of a 
perfected society into which there enters nothing 
that defileth, neither that which believeth or 
maketh a lie, a society of the pure and true, or 
rather of those who are purified and made true, men 
from all ages and all nations, all kindreds and all 
tongues, a society of men like in sympathy and 
disposition though various in many other ways. 
The Christ of God is the centre of that society ; 
its inspiration ; its archetype ; a society based on 
inward character not on anything else, the inward 
character being attested by outward allegiance to 
this Christ of God. In that society we shall get 
the perfection of communion, the ideal fellowship, 
all lovelessness gone, no envy there, no hatred, 
nothing that leads to schism, no insincere man 
there, no unbrotherly man, the society of which 
the church on earth has been, in its best estate, 
only the promise and prefiguration. John the 
Divine saw it in vision, and he wrote " Behold the 



THE WITXESSIXG CHUBCU. 73 

tabernacle of God is with men and he shall dwell 
with them, and they shall be his people, and God 
Himself shall be with them, and be their God. 
And he shall wipe away every tear from their 
eyes ; and death shall be no more ; neither shall 
there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more ; 
the first things are passed away." 

" And there shall be no curse anymore; and 
the Throne of God and of the Lamb shall be 
therein ; and his servants shall do him service ; 
and they shall see his face, and his name shall be 
in their foreheads. And there shall be ni^ht no 
more ; and they need no light of lamp, nor light 
of the Sun, for the Lord God shall give them light, 
and they shall reign forever and ever." 



VI. 
RETRIBUTION. 



Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man 
soweth, that shall he also reap. — Galatians, vi : 7. 

THE fact of Retribution is necessarily a very 
serious one to all who are not ' ' past feel- 
ing." We find the law of retribution working 
here in our life. It cannot be denied. The nat- 
ural inference is that a law here indicates a 
similar law beyond the period and condition we 
call temporal. Ostrich-like, we may hide our 
heads in the sand and refuse to see that which is 
disagreeable. It is w x iser and better always to 
face facts, never to ignore them, never to close 
our eyes to them. Interrogate them. Ask them 
what they mean and what they have to teach. 
Let us take what we do know and let it lead us to 
inferences consistent with it as to that which we 
do not know. Let us have the courage resolutely 
to stand by the laws and facts which are revealed. 
We recognize in ourselves, and so in other men, 
a sense of a righteousness which ouirht to be 

74 



RETRIBUTIOX. 75 

obeyed and maintained ; and we recognize also a 
condition of feeling, mind, will, life, that is not 
according to righteousness. All our efforts to 
make righteousness and unrighteousness the same, 
or the one a modification of the other, are failures. 
^Ve recognize also that unrighteousness brings 
penalty. It is so in society, although society may 
set up a very untrue standard of right and wrong, 
artificial, not according to the standard which God 
has set up in our consciences and in the Christ. 
Yea, material rewards may come to men who are 
persistently acting on principles of unrighteous- 
. acting selfiishly, i. e. in an ungodly manner. 
Very often it is so. This brings in confusion of 
mind. It creates perplexity. So much so that 
many men are led by it to the illegitimate infer- 
ence, that verily there is no special reward for 
the righteous, verily there is no God that judgeth 
in the Earth. And as material rewards are the 
only ones that men of perverted minds and cor- 
rupted feelings appreciate, the acting so as to get 
these material rewards is common. Xot only do 
industry and faithfulness bring these material 
rewards, but oftentimes dishonesty, shrewdness, 
heartlessness in bargaining and in taking advan- 
tage of men, bring them. Gambling brings 
them; gambling in many forms. Herein is the 
source of one of the strongest and most universal 
temptations of our life. A man does not seem any 



76 RETRIBUTION. 

the worse, so far as the outside appearances of his 
life are concerned, because of transactions that are 
not honorable and honest. Oftentimes he seems 
better ; he has acquired wealth and seems to have 
acquired importance. 

And this fact alone ouiHit to be enough to assure 
us that material rewards are not the only or the 
chief rewards which God gives. Man looks at 
the outward appearance, God looks at the heart, 
at that which is inward. Intellectual shrewd- 
ness and uuscrupulousness often bring gold to 
the coffers, but they never bring sensitiveness 
to the conscience, nor purity into the feeling, 
nor piety into the heart. Much otherwise. The 
man who has educated himself into that state in 
which he has ceased to be a tender-hearted, humane, 
brotherly man, and has sunk into a mere trafficker, 
to whom there is only one hell, to be poor, and 
only one heaven, to be rich, that man is not to be 
admired. If you have any feeling to expend on 
him, let it be pity, although even that will by no 
means be appreciated. If we are to understand 
anything about Retribution, about the law of 
rewards and punishments, we must look deeper 
than the outside, into the heart and intellect and 
conscience, the inward condition. 

Righteousness and unrighteousness, happiness 
and misery, are not expressible in terms of ma- 
terial gifts. The kingdom of God is within you, 



BETEIBUTIOy. 77 

saith the Lord : so is the kingdom of the Devil. 
Thus, it is evident that in considering this theme 
of Retribution, we have to look below the surface. 
We have to school ourselves into the recognition 
that a man is rich or poor really not according to 
what 3 but according to what he is. 

Every one knows how vigorous, of late years, 

has been the assault upon the idea of a material 

hell. And many there be who seem to have 

explored the Universe and have not found it. If 

they would explore some of the courts and alleys 

r Great cities, if they would £0 j n t some of 

the dens and dungeons which, to thousands of 

people, supply the only place they can call home, 

if they would acquaint themselves with the horrors 

ciety in some of their most terrific, loathesome 

and appalling forms, it would surely dawn upon 

them here was a use even yet for the word 

" hell,'' even in its material expression. I am 

quite ready to admit that nowhere in the Univ. i s 

can you find God's Hell, but you can lind that 

which man has made. I hope that none of us may 

1 that which was prepared for the devil 

his angels. Men have been determined, I 

know, to make the idea of hell ridiculous. 

that the materialism i< only imag 

ps and the purifying fires 

ntrefying carcases of the 

an v:ilb imag . has something behind 



78 RETRIBVTION. 

it which it bodies forth. The whole material world 
is, I apprehend, but a parable of the spiritual 
world. 

You know how valorously men have contended 
against the continuousness of the punishment of sin, 
but every man who sees below the surface of 
things must recognize that a man can sooner be 
divorced from his shadow than punishment can 
be separated from sin. Sin is self-willed separa- 
tion from God, unrepentant lawlessness of soul, 
and as long as sin continues the punishment which 
is inherent in it, the punishment which comes from 
the indwelling opposition of the soul to God, 
whatever it be, must continue. The proof that 
one form of the presentation of a fact cannot be 
the true one, is no argument that all presentations 
of it are untrue. No one has ever yet discovered 
a way to make a hardened, unrepenting man 
righteous or happy, so long as he continues 
in that condition. 

No one has ever yet discovered a method to 
prevent the w r orking of the law, "whatsoever a 
man soweth that shall he also reap." No man has 
ever discovered where there is an element of 
injustice in the principle on which judgment turns, 
that a man should receive the deeds done in the 
body according to that he had done, whether it 
be good or bad. 

Nor has any one discovered a way whereby a 



RETRIBUTION. 79 

man shall still be a man and yet be deprived of his 
power of choice, so as to be made righteous 
against his own will or wish. While it is 
altogether unbecoming of us to dogmatize on the 
only partially revealed future, yet we must not 
shrink from utterance of truth and fact as revealed 
in us, in the recognized laws of our nature, 
especially when they are clearly corroborated by 
the teachings of Scripture. The soul needs 
medicine as well as food. 

I am not competent fully to expound all our 
Lord's words on retribution. As far as my own 
preferences are concerned, I should rather always 
quote them in their literalness and let them stand 
unmodified and unaltered by anything I might say. 
Thus the man who has any objection to urge, 
w r ould have his controversy transferred from the 
servant to the master. 

That there is, on the part of some of us, 
preachers and hearers, much of disgraceful trifling 
with these utterances on retribution, and on behalf 
of others much equally disgraceful dogmatism, I 
cannot omit to notice. But there are some facts 
which we cannot but recognize, unless we wilfully 
blind ourselves to their existence, such facts as 
that everywhere sin brings some kind of misery, 
misery physical and misery mental. This and 
other like facts are as patent as the noon-day. 
We recognize that there is a destructive power in 



80 RETRIBUTION. 

this world, steadily and persistently working. 
Oftentimes men seem madly bent on their own de- 
struction. Nothing stops them, nothing arrests 
them. Judgment seems to be lost and reason to 
be dethroned. All badness has an accompanying 
madness concealed in it. It would seem as 
though mankind was preyed upon by some power 
outside itself, bent on destroying it. Apart from 
all Scripture revelation, that would be the conclu- 
sion at which serious students of the problem 
would arrive. We shrink from acknowledoino- an 
invisible Satanic personal power, operative upon 
the spirit of man, and yet nothing short of this can 
account for that terrible tendency to self-destruc- 
tion, which we find in our race. The New Testa- 
ment acknowledges this power. It represents its 
concentrated malignity as focussing itself to de- 
stroy this Jesus Christ of ours. Our Lord says of 
it, 'it is able to destroy both soul and body in hell' 
and He tells us to fear it. It is revealed that 
Jesus the Christ came to destroy the works of 
the devil. There are some who jest at these 
ideas ; but there cannot be any doubt of their ex- 
istence on the New Testament page. That which 
our Lord has revealed, accounts for so much which 
we recognize in our human life that it seems to me 
to offer a solution of a very dark problem. 

Perhaps some one is saying within himself, — 
what a terrible thing it is to be born exposed to 



RETRIBUTION. 81 

such a power ! It would be if it were an Omnipo- 
tent power, or a power which we could not resist, 
a power from which we could get no deliverance. 
But man is not left in this wretched and helpless 
state. The Deliverer is revealed: the One who 
comes between him and it to rescue all who put 
themselves under His protection. I cannot delay 
to remind you of that fact. At this point a ques- 
tion leaps into form — can the human lose its 
character as human and actually become devilish? 
The three stages of sinfulness as set forth by the 
Apostle, are these, ' earthly, sensual, devilish!' 
And we ourselves, in our common speech, recog- 
nize these three grades. 

There are some things which men do which 
cannot properly be characterized as either ' earthly' 
or • sensual' ; we are driven to the use of the third 
term because neither of the others is felt to be 
accurate. When we consider such cases as I 
could name, such cases as will occur to you all, 
they compel us to face the question : "Is it possible 
that there can be such an inversion of human 
nature that good should always appear evil and 
evil good?" Is it possible for men to be perma- 
nently fixed in a spiritual condition in which 
malice, envy, and hate banish all possibility of 
love, esteem and affection? For myself I don't 
know; I cannot answer these questions. They 
to be faced. Till they are answered, we 



82 RETRIBUTION. 

cannot affirm, as of clear knowledge, the termin- 
ableness of sin or the terminableness of its inherent 
and inevitable punishment of itself beyond that 
point in life we call death. Every man who speaks 
on this theme should first pray God to give him 
humility and to take from him the cantankerous 
spirit of the controversialist. I am sincere when 
I say that I do not wish to speak as an opponent 
of any sectarian of any kind. If any brother man 
has had a revelation from God, either through 
Scripture, or independently of it, which has 
assured his mind that ' ' not one life shall be 
destroyed, nor perish in the formless void, when 
God hath made the pile complete, " he is of all 
men to be envied. Xo such revelation has come 
to my own mind from any source. TThile no one 
present can shrink from the unfeeling dogmatist 
on this question of the future of the man who calls 
evil good and good evil, more than I do, yet if I 
were to affirm that I had met with a full revelation 
of the final rescue of every soul of man from sin and 
its consequences, I should put on record in the 
most solemn act of my life a dreadful falsehood. 
This is not a matter of one man's opinion or 
another's ; it is a matter of revelation. 

I admit that it seems certain that all revelation 
on all themes which concern man and the possibili- 
ties of his nature, may not belong to this world, 
cannot belong to it. A fuller revelation doubtless 



RETRIBUTION. 83 

will greet us on the other shore, for we have only 
the beginning of things here. The unfolding will 
go on forever and ever. This is only according 
to the laws we recognize as existing for oar minds 
now. That condition of mind in which men de- 
mand that everything be revealed to them, here 
and now, about the future of all who constitute 
this human race, or they will have nothing to do 
with God and religion, seems, I should think, to 
us all, about as proud, tyrannical, wilful and un- 
reasonable a state as any man can be in. There is 
really nothing to be done with a man in that con- 
dition, except to let him alone. Such a state is 
at the very antipodes of all teachableness. It is a 
compound of ignorance and wilfulness. A man 
says to me, ' I can't believe in a God who delights 
in damning men.' Nor can I. There is no such 
God revealed in the Xew Testament, from the lips 
of Jesus or his Apostles. " I have no pleasure in 
the death of the wicked, but rather that the 
wicked should turn and live." TTe damn our- 
selves, we damn one another, we unite with that 
Satanic power whose delight is rebellion against 
God. We worship the devil rather than God, — 
we do all this and thus destroy ourselves and our 
fellow-creatures, but the God revealed in Jesus 
Christ is in eternal antagonism to all this. There 
is no sin in God ; God is light and in Him is no 
darkness at all ; God is love, in him is no hate to 



84 RETRIBUTION. 

you or me or anyone. That which is not in the 
Divine Nature can never come forth from it. 
Nothing is more simple and incontrovertible than 
that. We want clearly to understand, in these 
days, that there is ever a distinction to be made 
between the revelations which have come to us in 
Jesus Christ and the inferences which men have 
drawn from them. We must take good heed 
never to be so wedded to our own views and 
opinions, simply because they are ours, as not to 
be willing and ready to be led by the action of the 
Holy Spirit on our spirits into higher perceptions 
of truth. If we get into that state we shall be as 
a man who should put iron shutters up to every 
window in his house so that the sunlight should 
not interfere with his enjoyment of the light of his 
own candles. There is nothing more fatal to men- 
tal growth and to growth in grace, than proud, 
self-willed opinionativeness. The sincere mind is 
an open mind ; the truthful mind is open — - not 
a vacillating one — far from that. It holds 
what it has, but it reaches forth to that which is 
beyond. A man without principles and convic- 
tions is the prey of the next evil man or evil spirit 
that assaults him. God has more light and truth 
to break forth from His Holy Word, but from that 
Holy Word, Jesus Christ has broken forth this 
lisfht and this truth alreadv, that union with Him 
is life, separation from Him is death, whatever be 



RETRIBUTION. 85 

included in that word. It will be proved yet to 
demonstration that whoever is of the truth hear- 
eth Christ's voice ; that no true man ever yet took 
sides against God's Christ when that Christ was 
fully and fairly presented to his heart and under- 
standing. And this also I believe will be shown, 
that there has never been any decree of God's 
which has condemned men to sin and suffer. 

The sin and suffering are our own, the rescue 
and deliverance are God's. Separated from Him 
in whom the father of our spirits is revealed, we 
become a prey to evil spirits in the flesh and evil 
spirits out of the flesh. Not to be afraid of sin 
and sinners, and the arch-sinner of all we call 
Satan and the Devil, and to be afraid of God, the 
God revealed in Jesus Christ, this of all things 
betokens the extent of our removal from the 
original righteousness. "What can be more 
frightful to a human soul than the loss of God? 
The word Atheism itself is a bottomless pit. " I 
will not leave you orphans," said our Lord to his 
disciples ; fatherless ones. Oh no, He would not 
leave us in doubt that over us at all times, and in 
us by the gift of His spirit at all times was a 
Father, the Father of such a Son, the Father of 
Jesus Christ; is not that enough? What more 
dreadful mission is conceivable for a lost soul than 
to go about the world to try to rob other souls of 
their hope in a Father in heaven? Who of us 



86 RETRIBUTION. 

would not prefer annihilation to this dreadful 
mission ? And yet no man would or could believe 
it, but he who had so sinned himself into 
wretchedness as to want to believe it. And even 
he would doubt his own belief. Let us never 
lose sight of this fact that union with God in 
Christ is heaven, for the soul of man was made for 
that; separation from God in Christ is hell, the 
soul of man was never made for that. Whatever 
brings us nearer to God brings us into the sphere 
of ineffable reward, such as eye hath not seen, nor 
ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of 
man to conceive ; whatever separates us from Him 
brings us into that sphere of retribution into which 
we cannot look far, where the selfish and the 
loveless find those of their own order and kind. 
They go there, God does not send them ; such is 
the revelation. There is no change in God, none 
in Christ. " He is the same yesterday, to-day and 
for ever." While I am persuaded that no man 
living is able fully to interpret the whole of this 
theme, yet I think we can say this much with 
confidence : — 

1. That the Eternal One can make no compro- 
mise with sin. " If God were not sure to punish 
the evil, and to make it bear, so far as it remains 
evil, the weight of his condemnation, the good 
would lose for us its reality." 

2. As to duration, that as long as the sin 



RETRIBUTION. 87 

lasts, so long will its appropriate punishment last. 

3. That no punishment will be inflicted which 
will throw the Divine Character as revealed in 
Christ into discord with itself. 

4. That, as there is no malice in the Divine 
nature and no cruelty, all punishment will have as 
its purpose an end worthy of the divine nature. 

5. That future punishment will be to present 
sin as consequence to cause. 

6. That it will be inevitable and not arbitrary. 

7. That it will be of such a nature, that no 
enlightened mind in the Universe of God can offer 
any objection to it that shall not be unreasonable. 

Ought I not to add for every perplexed soul on 
this and all other vital themes, "Come unto me 
all ye that labor and are heavy laden and ye shall 
find rest unto your souls." 



VII. 
MEANS AND END. 



And why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I 
say? — Luke,\i: 46. 

ON February 20th, 1844, in the Supreme 
Court at Washington, a great speech was 
made by a man who must ever be allowed the 
first rank among the statesmen and orators of 
America. The speech is remarkable not alone for 
the purity of its English, not alone for the manli- 
ness of its stj'le, for these remarks apply to all the 
speeches of this great man. It is noteworthy for 
the passionateness and evident genuineness of the 
sympathy which the speaker manifests with the 
truths and facts of the Christian religion, and with 
the means which are used and which are inevitable 
for its propagation. 

A sum of money had been bequeathed to found 
a college in Philadelphia from within whose walls 
all Christian ministers were to be excluded. 
Daniel Webster anmed that this exclusion virtu- 

o 

ally amounted to the ostracism of Christianity 
itself, and that it followed that in no true legal 

88 



MEANS AND EXD. 89 

sense could this college take rank as a charity. 
The speech is memorable as embracing the views 
of the most statesmanlike mind, the most robust 
nature, this country has ever produced, on this one 
point, the relation of the means to the end, and the 
inevitable inference that must be drawn in regard 
to their judgment of the value of the end by those 
who neglect the means employed for the accom- 
plishment of it. The end in view is the diffusion 
of Christianity among the people. The means 
used are; 1, the establishment by our Lord him- 
self of the Ministry ; 2, the bringing into existence 
of the Church; 3, the compilation of the Scrip- 
tures ; 4, the ordinance of the Sabbath. This 
statesman, jurist, orator, this man of the first 
rank in each department, contends that so long as 
we treat the means that are inevitable for the dif- 
fusion of Christianity with contempt, it is vain and 
frivolous to be talking of any respect we may have 
for Christianity itself. Our actions give the lie 
to our word-. 

44 There is a positive rejection of Christianity ; 
because it rejects the ordinary means and agencies 
of Christianity. He who rejects the ordinary 
means of accomplishing an end means to defeat 
that end itself, or else he has no meaning. And 
this is true, although the means originally be 
means of human appointment, and not attaching 
to or resting on any higher authority." 



90 MEANS AND END. 

TTebster contends that there is nothing in the 
New Testament more clearly established by the 
Author of Christianity than the appointment of a 
Christian ministry. He asks, "Did a man ever 
live that had a respect for the Christian religion 
and yet had no regard for any one of its 
ministers?" 

He contends further that religion is " the only 
solid basis of morals," and that moral instruction 
not resting on this basis is only a building upon 
sand. He contends that the moral law of the ten 
commandments includes the whole ten in its idea 
of morality. He suggests that the man who moves 
away the foundation of morals is aiming at the 
destruction of morality as well as Christianity. He 
further contends that Christianity is of such a 
nature that it belongs as really to children as to 
adults, and that there is neither religion, nor 
morals, nor reason in any course of action which 
sets aside the means that have been verified as 
necessary to the diffusion of that truth which is 
included in the word ' Christianity.' 

He further remarks that ' ' the observance of the 
Christian Sabbath is a part of Christianty in all its 
forms;" that "where there is no observance of 
the Christian Sabbath there will be no public 
worship of God," and he quotes with cordial 
approval and hearty endorsement an address which 



MEANS AND END. 91 

had just been delivered, in which are these 
words : — " you might as well put out the sun and 
think to enlighten the world with tapers, destroy 
the attraction of gravity and think to wield the 
Universe by human powers, as to extinguish the 
moral illumination of the Sabbath and break this 
glorious main-spring of the moral government of 
God." And when, with his strong manly 
eloquence, and his clear great intellect, he has 
examined the argument brought on the other side 
for allowing Girard College to be accepted as a 
charity, although from six years old to eighteen 
the vouth there are to have no religious instruc- 
tion, the orator seems to grow impatient with 
himself at the development of his argument, and 
lets himself out in one passionate sentence as he 
realizes what is involved in depriving these youths 
of their rights, and adds : " Why Sir, it is vain to 
talk about the destructive tendency of such a 
system ; to argue upon it is to insult the 
understanding of every man ; it is mere, sheer, 
low, ribald, vulgar deism, and infidelity." 

Now I have made this copious reference to one 
ofthemo^t powerful orations that ever Webster 
made, because it contains the deliberate judgment 
of the greatest New Englander, the one who will 
be remembered and read and quoted, in the gen- 
erations to come, oftener than any other, that I 
may have the best backing I can get for the 



92 MEANS AND END. 

enforcement upon your attention of the principle, 
that he who neglects the means conspires to defeat 
the end. One of the most unpromising features 
of our time is the seeming inability of so many 
people to perceive this very thing, the connection 
of means and end. Neglect the means and you 
are doing your best to defeat the end. I will not 
venture upon giving my opinion as to the causes 
of the condition in which so many find themselves, 
of having a sort of decent respect for some indefi- 
nite type of Christianity and yet to them Chris- 
tianity is not necessary to morality, not necessary 
to good government, not necessary to citizenship, 
not necessary to personal development, not 
necessary to character, not necessary to anything. 
On its practical side, Christianity is bound up 
with the Sabbath, with the Church, with the 
Scriptures, with the Ministry of the Gospel. 
Through these, it gets voice, body and form. 
Vrithout them it is a disembodied spirit. These 
are to it, what the lungs and limbs and nerves and 
veins and arteries are to the body. In this mate- 
rial world the spirit in man operates through 
these. There is no influence of the Spirit in man 
on this present order of things apart from these. 

I am aware that there are very many persons 
over whom the irresistible reasoning of this most 
Titanic of Americans whom I have quoted, would 
have no influence. They have listened to tell-tale 



MEAX8 AXD END. 93 

Rumor which is always busy, and have heard this 
and that about him which, if true, indicates that 
he was by no means a perfect man. This is not a 
lecture on Webster. This is not the time nor 
the place to search into these reports. But this I 
will say, that I am ashamed for our intelligence ; 
I am ashamed for our honesty ; I am ashamed for 
our candor, I am ashamed for our Christianity, if 
we can allow a tew beldame stories, such as are 
invented against all great men, to obscure our 
vision as to the real greatness of mind and heart, 
which dwelt in that imposing form. 

The fruit of a choice apple tree is none the less 
luscious because for one month of the Spring time 
the canker-worm disfigured many of the leaves. 
I wish that with as much of truth we could all say 
as he said : — 

"I thank God, that if I am gifted with little of 
that spirit which is able to raise mortals to the 
skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other 
spirit which would drag angels down." 

It is no answer to the principle here asserted by 
this great man, the principle that the man who 
neglects the mean* aims to defeat the end, that 
sometimes the orator was not himself quite correct 
in his conduct. AVho is? Which of us can stand 
up in that presence which searches the heart, and 
say that we have always been correct in our con- 
duct? But does that make Christianity untrue ? 



94 ME£NS AND END. 

Nay, it verifies its truth, when it says * that there 
is not a just man upon earth that doeth good and 
sinneth not.' The inconsistencies of Christians 
have nothing to do with the truth of Christianity, 
or rather Christianity has nothing to do with them. 
It is not accountable for them. If we are to wait 
for perfect specimens of Christianity before there 
is any utterance of it, or any teaching of it, total 
silence must forever reign. Some knowledge is 
necessary to utterance but not perfect knowledge. 
Some experience of Christianity is necessary to 
the appreciation of its greatness, its grandeur, its 
benevolence, but not perfection of experience. 
Our preaching of it may often be, as Sheridan 
once remarked, "a poulterer's description of a 
phoenix," still any preaching of Christ and Him 
crucified is better than none, as St. Paul suggested 
when some were vile enough to preach Christ out 
of envy and strife, only to cause the Apostle 
pain, "Notwithstanding, whether in pretence or 
in truth, Christ is preached, and therein will I 
rejoice." 

I wish that in these days Webster's great speech 
could be printed as a religious tract to be distribu- 
ted broad-cast among people who credit themselves 
with intelligence. Do we not need it? Are there 
not many who assume that they are, in some sort 
of way, and in some sense of the word ' Christians' 
and yet who do not study the Scriptures, and do 



MEANS ASD E2<D. 95 

IT i 

not use the means of grace, and have no reverence 

for the Sabbath, and seldom put themselves under 
the influence of any ministry of the Gospel ? Such 
perse ns would feel aggrieved if it were said to them 
that they were seeking to defeat those ends which 
to Jesus Christ were so momentous that he held 
not himself back from agony and death that He 
might accomplish them. Yet, if these arguments 
of this greatest of Americans are unanswerable, it 
is true. No man is promoting the ends which our 
Lord came to accomplish, who is neglecting the 
Church, the Scriptures, the Ministry or the 
Sabbath. I wish to be reasonable. I would not 
press a man so hard as to create antagonism in his 
mind towards the truth. But, I think that 
none of you, I hope that none of you, would 
care to listen to any Minister who does not regard 
his allegiance to Christ as the first thing. There 
is no man whom I should myself more despise than 
he who standing in a Christian pulpit would say the 
thing which would make him popular, regardless 
of whether he believed it to be true or not. We 
have been hearing of late very much about the Old 
and the New. For myself I am not interested, as 
to whether a thing be old or new, T want to know 
if it be trvp. Is it in accord with the mind of 
Christ and the will of God? And this principle 
which the foremost statesman of New England has 
brought into the happiest form of expression, 



96 MEANS AND END. 

appears to me to be true. In neglecting the 
means we are aiming to defeat the end. Men who 
are not intelligently observing the Sabbath, elevat- 
ing it in its uses above other days, are co-operating 
to defeat the ends for which the Sabbath was 
ordained. In not systematically and diligently 
using the means of grace, we are co-operating to 
defeat the end for which the means of grace were 
ordained — the spiritualization of the charac- 
ter. If we are at heart Christians and are 
not confessedly of the Church, we are silently 
(perhaps unintentionally and unconsciously), but 
really, aiming to defeat the end for which the 
Church of Christ was called into existence. What 
is lawful for one Christian must surely be lawful 
for all. Anyway, there must be something very 
special in the case of a Christian heart to justify 
its position of aloofness from a Christian church. 
I know that all Christian churches, in their 
administration, partake of human infirmitiy. But 
wherever there is the simple acknowledgment of 
Christ as supreme, the presence of human infirmi- 
ty is reduced to a minimum of influence. There 
is however a blessing special to the church, a 
blessing of God which belongs to his disciples, and 
can belong in the nature of things to none other. 
Obedience always brings blessedness. 

Is it not so in Nature? The mariner never 
thinks of entering into conflict with the laws of 



MEANS AND END. 97 

nature ; he conforms to them, he obe} r s them. 
There is a blessing in obedience. There is 
destruction in disobedience. And so on land as 
on sea; — the farmer's prosperity depends upon 
his understanding the laws of vegetable and ani- 
mal life and co-operating with those laws. There 
is a blessing in obedience which can be obtained in 
no other way. It is so everywhere; in regard 
to our own personality ; in regard to mental health 
and bodily health. Obey sanitary laws and you 
get the blessing, disobey them and you miss it. 
Xow, it would be a strange inconsistency, if the 
Almighty should teach us of the way of obtaining 
a blessing in Nature, and contradict that truth in 
the highest region of all. Would it not be aston- 
ishino* if obedience to material laws brought 
blessing, and disobedience to spiritual laws did 
not bring the opposite of blessing? If our Lord 
says to us, Do so and so, rely upon it that there is 
some benevolent reason why we should do it. All 
Divine commands are founded in benevolence. 
All Divine institutions are founded in benevo- 
lence. That is true of the Church ; it is true of the 
Sabbath ; it is true of the Scriptures ; it is true of 
the Ministry; of all these four things to which 
Webster referred as means to the end of diffusing 
Christianity. No man of you is more sensitive 
than I am to the unchristian elements which have 
been introduced by fallen and fallible men into 



98 MEANS AND END. 

church life. So oppressive have they been at 
times to my spirit, so hateful have they seemed, 
so hot has been my aversion to them, that I have 
had fight after fight with myself to keep in the 
Ministry. I believe in Christianity with all my 
intellect and with all my heart. Nothing is so 
dear to me as Christian truth. It grows upon me 
all the time. The more I look into the New Test- 
ament the more I believe in its inspiration. It is 
incalculably nobler in its temper, immeasurably 
higher in its spirituality than anything I find else- 
where. Men wrote it, bat it is free from the 
weaknesses, the meannesses, the jealousies, the sec- 
tarianisms of men. God ruled while men wrote, 
that is what I mean by inspiration. God's mind 
dominated man's. God's mind was uppermost 
and man's undermost. God's thought dominated 
man's opinion and held it in subjection. The men 
who wrote were so full of God that they could do 
no other than write his thoughts. It is like as 
when a lawyer has been living day and night in 
Blackstone. He becomes so dominated by him 
that his own thought is permeated by Blackstone. 
Or, as when a surgeon has been submitting him- 
self to the influence and teaching of Sir Astley 
Cooper, he is controlled by him. These men were 
what Schleirmacher would call, " God-intoxicated 
men." They were filled full of Christ and so 
spake the Divine thought. They could do no 



MEANS AXD EXD. 99 

other. They spake as seeing Him who is invisi- 
ble, and they acted as seeing him who is invisible. 
And 'ii have only to take any volume of 

Divinity written by man, any church articles for- 
mulated by man, and compare them with the 
spirit and temper of the Scriptures to see the 
incomparableness of the Scriptures. They are 

all time, and not for any single age. 

in these Scriptures we tind Christ's 
idea of the Church, and the Apostolic idea. We 
do not realize them. The Scripture idea of the 
Chui itirely free from all such divisions as 

raominationalism. The Church of 
the t stament is the fraternity of all who love 

and - brist. If a man will not submit his 

will and spirit to Christ, he docs not belong to the 
Church, if I. submit his will ami spirit to 

Christ he bel i the church. But, in 

Scripture, faith always means character, internal 
character, the internal character which recognizes 
- when it sees Him and clings to Him. Jt is 
nothing less than a perversion of Scripture to 
identify faith with opinion. Now, while we are 
living below the Scripture idea of the church of 
I wc are aiming at it and trying to 

.1 under this constanl aim, the ( liurch 
will grow more and more Christlike in it- spirit. 
And it i- the duty of all who are Christian in hope 

in heart to unite with it openly and unabashed. 



100 MEANS AND END. 

TThy call ye me Lord, Lord and do not the thing 
which I say? Church membership is not a matter of 
personal perfection or imperfection. It is a matter 
of obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ. I am obliged 
to put it on that simple ground. I should not be 
truthful to my own convictions if I put it on any 
other. It is a means of grace, if we use the means, 
we are manifestly aiming at the end. 

And then again as to the Sabbath — another 
means for the diffusion of Christianity. It is 
founded in benevolence. I could not believe in a 
God who made it necessary for five-sixths of this 
human race to earn their bread by the sweat of 
the brow, or the sweat of the brain, if he let them 
work on and on without any authoritative command 
periodically to stop. That would indicate him a 
slave-master, not a God. Three-hundred and 
sixty -five days in every year devoted to unbroken 
toil, who could believe that such a command ever 
came from a good God ? Not that I believe that 
hand work is in these days of ours the most ex- 
hausting work. No! — brain-work, continued on 
and on, is the wear and tear of life. The brain- 
workers more than the hand-workers need to stop 
every seventh day, and shut down business and 
bolt and bar the door on it, and turn their atten- 
tion to something entirely different. For relief 
comes to the brain, not from total cessation of 
thinking, that is impossible, but from other think- 



MEANS AND END. 101 

ins". And the more entirely different the theme 
the more recuperative it is. That is the reason 
why some of our greatest English statesmen, yes 
and our greatest American lawyers, have been 
anions: the healthiest and strongest minds. Glad- 
stone can sit and listen to a sermon with as much 
enjoyment of it as though it was a revelation to 
him. A late Lord Chancellor, who presided over 
the House of Peers, taught a Sunday School class. 
The great pleader at the American bar, Choate, 
could continuously and untiringly enjoy the simple 
evangelical mini-try of Dr. Adams. Webster was a 
constant attendant on worship. These men used 
the mean.- as seeing that the only way to accom- 
plish the end was to use them. How is it possible 
to believe that any one sees the momentousness of 
Christianity and its relation to our life here and 
hereafter if he neglect the means appointed for its 
propagation? Even Charity, hard as she may try, 
cannot believe it. To every such person the ques- 
tion comes direct from the lips of Jesus. — " Why 
call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things 
which I say?'' 



VIII. 
"WORSHIP GOD." 



Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not : for I am thy fellow- 
servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep 
the sayings of this book : worship God. — Revelatio?is, xxh : 9. 

IT may seem strange to some of you that I 
should introduce such a simple theme as this 
to a congregation assembled for the avowed pur- 
pose of worshipping God. I do not wish to insult 
your intelligence ; very far from that. I have 
always tried to give all proper deference and 
respect to intelligence, believing, as I do, that true 
and real Christian preaching is certain to deepen, 
broaden, elevate and ennoble the intelligence of 
those who submit themselves to it. Why not? 
Is it not occupied with the profoundest of all 
themes? What theme can be profounder than 
the nature of God, the nature of man, and the 
relation of man to God ? If there be any theme 
profounder than that I would like to know what it 
is. And should there be anyone here inclined to 
say that we can know nothing about it, or next to 

102 



'WORSHIP GOD." 103 

nothing, or only a very little, I beg to join issue 
with that individual. He is not speaking intelli- 
gently, not speaking out of his own individuality, 
only reiterating phrases which he has learnt from 
others. Supposing I never see the artist who 
painted that interesting animal picture "Dignity 
and Impudence." I have never looked on his 
face never talked with him, never asked him as 
to his likes and dislikes. But I look on his picture, 
study it. not its coloring only or chiefly, or its 
drawing, hut its expressiveness. 

And as I look and look I say to myself — Land- 
evidently had a wonderful fondness for dogs. 
He must have had it, or he could not have put 
that expression into the faces of those dogs, 
Those eyes are almost human in their expressive- 
And so, take any work of any man, and 
study it, and you will learn something about the 
man. Nol everything, byanymeans, hut something. 
If however in addition to that picture you had 
Btudied other pictures of Landseer, your knowledge 
of the man would have grown more and more 4 ; it 
then you had talked with people who had visited 
him, held social converse with him, walked with 
. ate with him, been with him in trouble and 
your knowledge would have grown into a kind 
of intimaey, and yet you have never seen the man. 
Bui without seeing him, you have true knowledge 
of him. > it is in respect to rvrvy one. S > 



104 "WORSHIP GOD." 

it is in respect to God Himself. You can know 
much of Him. All his works speak of Him. 
There is strength in Him says the mighty mountain. 
There is majesty in Him say the Niagaras as they 
roar. There is light in Him, says the sun. 
There is order in Him say the stars ; such order, 
says the comet, such punctuality in fulfilling His 
appointments, that I will be back again from my 
measureless orbit to a second. There is love in 
Him says Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ is as 
much a fact as is this American Nation. We can 
know enough about God to occupy us for the 
years we have here. Yea : we can know more 
about Him than these few years can ever 
exhaust. 

Of course no one knows a thing, much less a 
person with any respectable degree of knowledge, 
who does not come into some kind of personal 
relationship with the thing or person. Our 
relationship to God must be personal. It must 
be something more than organic. The beasts that 
roam the forests, the cattle on a thousand hills, 
have some sort of relationship to God. He 
provides for them. He must delight in them. 
The song of the bird, the mild content of the 
domesticated cow, the proud beauty of the Arab 
steed, the majesty of the lion, these must delight 
Him. They express some thought and feeling in 
the Divine mind, very imperfectly, very blunder- 



"WOBSHIP GOD." 105 

ingly, very distantly, but still enough to start us 
thinking and inquiring. And is not that an 
excellent use ? Is it not much to be preferred that 
a man should be perplexed with nr^steries than 
that he should be uninterested in anything, torpid 
and indifferent to a most shameful degree? It is 
even to be preferred that a man should pass along 
the way of life grumbling at everything he meets 
than that he should not exist at all, although jo\x 
and I perhaps do not want to meet that man too 
often. But still, God has some use for him, as 
He has for a mosquito, although I have never 
discovered what it is. Do you suppose that the 
Almighty has to give an account of everything he 
does and makes to you and me? I believe that 
the mysteries of life have a use and service in 
regard to man which is by no means despicable. 
The fact that there is so much unknown makes 
life doubly interesting. I am persuaded that one 
reason why this country is at the present day 
perhaps the most interesting country on the 
bee of the earth lies in the fact of its bcin^ 
only partially developed, and in the other fact 
that we arc trying experiments all the while, 
the great experiment of making all nations into one 
nation. And the very fact that our politicians 
an I others make Mich emphatic assertions as to 
our greatness and our excellency is a sign that we 
arc a little bit afraid as to where the experiment 



106 "WORSHIP GOD." 

will land us, and those who are to come after 
us. There is this consolation, however, that we 
cannot with our democracy do very much worse 
than others have done with their monarchies and 
aristocracies, but if we do not do better, and very 
much better, a heavy cloud of disappointment will 
hang over the whole earth for ages to come. 
Perhaps some are inclined to saj^, " Well, we shall 
know nothing about it ; w^e shall be away from 
here." Don't be so sure, my friend. If Moses 
and Elijah knew what was being transacted on this 
earth after they had left it, and came to that 
Mount of Transfiguration, we have more than a 
su£o-estion that we are to know about this earth 
after we have left it. The putting off this prison- 
house of a material body is not going to produce 
total separation between this earth and our future, 
unless all the hints of Scripture are misleading. 
The doctrine of the solidarity of the human race — 
that what affects one affects all — is full of meaning. 
There is more in Scripture than any of you 
suppose upon the connection of the eternal future 
with the present, and the carrying of the present 
into the future, But I will not be tempted along 
that line now. 

We know enough of God to enable us to 
worship Him and serve Him. That is the practi- 
cal thing. What is worship ? Admiration leading 
to imitation. Nothing short of that. That is our 



"Wobsiiip god:^ 107 

Lord's idea of it as you will find in the Sermon on 
the Mount. In Wordsworth's poems there are 
some excellent hints on this subject, which I 
cannot quote. So also in Tennyson. So also in 
Longfellow. These men will all help you to get 
into that state of mind in which you are capable of 
worship. For not all men are capable of such 
admiration as will lead to imitation. God made 
man capable originally. This state of admiration 
leading to imitation was the easy, natural state of 
the first man. That is the Mosaic idea. But our 
fathers fell out from that ability, and we have 
fallen out still more, till men and women have lost 
this ability of admiration to the point of imitation. 
There are many things in the writings of Thomas 
I trlyle which none of us can accept. But there 
i- one feature in the rugged old man which I 
have always appreciated, his intense admiration 
for hi- heroes, Cromwell, Frederick the Great, 
Knox, Mahomet, and others. He delights in 
their power and ability, and in their love of 
hteousness. \i only we could search sufB- 
ntly into character to verily the remark, I 
think we should find that no man was ever really 
• 1 or really great who had not in him a strong 
tendency to idolize somebody. For what does 
this tendency mean ? [t means that in the indi- 
vidual there i- great receptive power, great heart 
power, power. And what does that 



108 "WORSHIP god: 1 

mean, but great power of goodness? A man's 
judgment may be at fault and lie may choose an 
unworthy object, but there will be something in 
his object that fascinates and holds him. A man 
who has the capacity of great admiration has not 
and cannot have the ability of great enviousness of 
disposition. For the two traits are psychologically 
incompatible. The one excludes the other. 

We may laugh at Carlyle's hero-worship, but 
was it not much better than no ability of worship 
at all? There is the terrible defect, no ability of 
worship at all, indicating, as it does, low intellectu- 
alism, low heart power, low imaginativeness, low 
ideality, general inferiority all through. The 
ability of admiration must be in us, and it must be 
in us to the degree of imitation, or Jesus Christ 
Himself will have no power to fascinate and hold 
us. And if even the heroic character of Jesus, 
the masculine character of Jesus, the feminine 
character of Jesus, the superlatively human char- 
acter of Jesus, the Divine character of Jesus, if 
that have no power to win us, and hold us, and 
draw us out, and bring us to our knees in worship, 
then, I know not what to say. Something terri- 
ble is the matter with that man's nature which 
does not respond to the ineffable excellency which 
is in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is of no use 
deceiving men. That is cruel. I say, wherever 
there is no response to the fully presented char- 



"WORSHIP GOD." 109 

acter of Jesus Christ, wherever it does not win 
admiration, leading to imitation, in a word wor- 
ship, there is something seriously wrong in that 
nature. St. Paul, one of the most gifted men of 
the world, one of the most considerate, one of the 
most loving and humane, even he could not refrain 
himself when he thought of Christ Jesus rejected, 
and said, "If any man love not the Lord Jesus 
Christ, let him be anathema " 

I admit that it does seem as though every nature 
ought to have in it this ability of worship. 'We 
Bee it to a most pitiful extent in many heathen 
people, giving up for the sake of their false deities 
BO very, very much; so very much more than we 
give up for the sake of our Christ. And I think 
God Almighty respects and loves them and will 
not be hard upon them, probably put many of 
them into higher service in the hereafter than you 
and I Bhall reach. But the lesson we ought to 
Irani from these heathen people is, that theology 
18 not to be despised, that men will be this or that 
in life and feeling according to their theology, 
that to net a true theology is, after all, worth 
while. Doubtless there are people who assume 
that the theologic disputations of all ages are 
frivolous. But, lei us not be in a hurry to concur 
in thai opinion. It it be true that men will be 
this or thai according to their ideas of what God 
is and what He requires of them, is it not worth 



no "worship god:' 

while to be very careful lest we should get wrong 
views and opinions as to the nature of Diety ? If 
I believe that the Almighty is simply Almighty, 
that that is His chief attribute, the result will be 
fear. My soul will crouch in His presence. I 
shall be but a slave. I cannot rise any higher 
than that. If on the other hand I believe that 
Deity has as its chief attribute easy good nature, 
no indignation in it, no hostility to anything; 
then I shall be sure to infer that good and evil are 
only names, words only, not things, And 
righteousness of thought and feeling will be 
impossible to me. The idea will help on the 
corruptness of my nature. It was so in Greece 
and Rome ; their ideas of Deity were so corrupt 
that they corrupted the people. So long as Mars 
w T as worshipped as a Deity, war was perpetual. 
So long as Venus was a goddess, lust was inevita- 
ble. So long as the gods were treacherous the 
people were treacherous also. When religion's 
self is of such a nature that it corrupts the people, 
the decline and fall are very rapid. And so, it 
would seem that the disputations of theologians 
are not meaningless or useless. They are vital. 
To get at the truth is worth in its result all that 
we can sacrifice of ease and peace. If we do not 
care what the truth is, then, well then — God help 
us — that is all I can say. 

Recognizing this ability of worship as being in 



"WORSHIP god:' 111 

our constitution, a part of our manhood, that 
which lifts us above the animal, that which 
bespeaks us of a higher order of being; and stat- 
ing it, as we have done in this formula, ' admiration 
leading to imitation' — does it not appear that 
whatever we admire to the point of imitation we 
worship ? Please to be careful in taking into your 
memory the whole of this phrase, admiration to 
the point of imitation. There may be admiration 
of so feeble a kind that it does not produce any 
desire to imitate. There may be imitation which 
does not involve admiration. It is mere slavishness 
and weakness, the inability to be even amiably 
individual. The extent to which the thins which 

imporarily fashionable in dress or anything 
else is adopted shows how slavish and how weak 

all are. Imitation there may be without 
admiration, admiration without imitation, but 
when we get admiration up to the point of 
imitation then we have worship. 

And this worshipfulness in us may produce very 

3trous results to character when the object is 
unworthy. We have read of devil worship. Of 
course we assume that in an advanced civilization 
like our own, we are leagues away from this. I 
wish with all my heart thai I could believe it. 
Scripture reveals to us an Evil Personality which 

lis the Prince of Darkness. It tells us that 
He is the Father of Lies, the Accuser of the 



112 "WOBSHIP GOD." 

Brethren, the Devourer, the One who offers to 
men (as he did to Jesus) power and wealth if only 
they will take it in his way, if only they will 
fall down and worship Him. He is represented as 
being the enslaver of the human soul, as being 
the arch-enemy of Christ, as great in wiles and 
snares, as inciting to sin, as serpentine in his 
nature, as not only at one time a roaring lion, but 
at another as a snake in the grass, the arch-traitor, 
the arch-deceiver. This is the New Testament 
revelation of the character of this Prince of Dark- 
ness. You say you don't believe in him. I hope 
not. But some do, for they imitate him. They 
admire his methods and adopt them. If, you 
mean, that you don't believe in his existence, then 
you know more than Jesus Christ knows. About 
which I for one have an honest doubt. This 
Prince of Darkness has been very successful in 
this world. From the time of Adam he has been 
at work here, injecting into the minds of men 
wrong views about God, and about themselves. 
He cannot eradicate from the constitution of man 
the propensity to worship and so he says ' ' worship 
me ; I like to be worshiped. Admire my methods, 
imitate my way of action," (for that is worship.) 
Worship is not simply bending the knee. It is 
admiration to the point of imitation. And so it 
comes to this that if we adopt the methods which 
are not approved by Jesus the Christ but are 



" WORSHIP GOD." 113 

approved by the Tempter of Jesus, we worship, I 
do not like to admit it, I shrink from the admis- 
sion, but I cannot see any way of escape, we 
worship the devil. I am compelled to go a step 
farther yet and say that if our souls were so 
purified that evil would be a positive pain to us, as 
much of a pain to the soul as the stab of a poniard to 
the bod}', our perceptions would be so spiritualized 
that the extent to which devil worship prevails 
would appear to us frightful and horrible. That 
I ma}' not seem to be making vain and vague 
general charges against an impersonal somebody 
about whom none of you are concerned, let me 
ask you to recall some of the acknowledged facts of 
common life. This evil one against whom our Lord 
warns us is called " The Father of Lies." Think 
how many people there are who do not shrink 
from falsehood when there is anything to be 
gained by it. Whom do these worship? "Whom 
do they imitate? 

This Evil Personality is called, " The Accuser of 
the Brethren." Are there no persons living in the 
world who seem to take a malicious and cruel de- 
light in insinuations which undermine the character 
of others — specially of Christian men and women ? 
Whom do these worship? They who systemati- 
cally betray others and deceive others, who lay 
traps for them and snares for them — whom do 
e worship? They worship Him whom they 



114 "WORSHIP GOB." 

imitate ; there is no other answer. TTe really 
need not take ship and cross the seas to find 
devil-worship. Unless the teaching of Jesus is 
not reliable, it is nearer home than that. 

But I must turn away from it ; — it is too pain- 
ful a theme to dwell on for more than a moment. 
Jesus the Christ by the gift of the Holy Spirit can 
deliver us from this frightful worship, but no one 
else can. It is His mission on this earth, to 
deliver us from it. Let us learn more and more 
to admire and imitate Him that we may overcome 
it. For the full consequences of it are not seen 
here on earth. The end is not by and by. 

My time is passing, but it would not do to stop 
at this point. I must detain you a minute or two 
longer while I say that there is nothing that you 
and I need for our enlightenment and enlivenment 
so much as a more simple and earnest worship of 
God. Our minds grow languid, our intellect 
becomes torpid, our affections loose their youthful 
freshness and energy if we do not keep before us 
some one to admire and imitate, some one to wor- 
ship. Practically, to us, God is Jesus Christ. 
T\ T e cannot get above what He has revealed. If 
you think otherwise try it. In the Church we 
need a more simple, hearty, enthusiastic worship 
of God. I hope you will not be frightened at that 
word ' enthusiastic' It does not mean fanatic. 
Fanaticism is blind emotion, uncurbed by reason. 



"WORSHIP god:' 115 

unchecked by intellect. It is the steam in the 
engine uncontrolled by the hand of the engineer. 
But enthusiasm — it means the Spirit of God in 
the intellect, the Spirit of God in the reason, the 
Spirit of God in the heart and so in the whole 
personality and in the whole life. I was telling 
some friends the other night about a clergyman in 
London, sitting in the retiring room of a Cemetery 
Chapel, waiting patiently for a funeral which was 
much behind the appointed time, when suddenly 
the sexton opened the door, and said to the clergy- 
man, "If you please, Sir, the Corpse's brother 
wants to speak with you." The astonished 
clergyman was for a moment appalled at the idea 
of meeting a Corpse's brother, hardly knowing 
whether it would be a live or dead man. I have 
sometimes thought that some of our churches 
might not inaptly be designated as a Corpse's 
brother. I have no ambition to be tied to any 
such church. If there be any place where the 
smell of death is not only unpleasant but repul- 
sive, it is in a church whose very foundation is 
life from the dead. As one has said, "Our 
churches as mere organized bodies are comely 
enough, and they are not without some degree of 
life and strength. They work easily, quietly, 
philosophically, and cautiously, like a man of 
seventy years of age who is careful in all his 
movements, and afraid of doing too much. Uut 



116 "WORSHIP god: 1 

you must excuse me when I say that we are want- 
ins; in the strength and vigor and energy of a man 
of twenty-five. We are old before our time." 

We need to worship God. That is all. Every- 
thing we need would come if only we could 
tvorship. The coldness would leave the region of 
the heart. There would come more thinking 
power into the intellect. The glories of the Apo- 
calypse would not be too glorious for the 
regenerated imagination. Much of the Scripture 
which is now dark to us, because out of the reach 
of our experience, would become clear. Our 
horizon would stretch out and out beyond the 
present limits of vision. How often it is with us 
as with those painters who paint a beautiful little 
bit of country all shut in with rocks and hills, not 
even a glimpse of luminous sky above to speak 
of something else than this ornate little prison. 
The greatest painters never do that. They leave 
an outlook. They suggest infinite distances. 
Our life, the life of every Unchristianized man is 
shut in. It has no outlook. What would the 
New Testament be without the Book of the Eev- 
elation of St. John? That gives it artistic 
completeness. The end of the Book of Eevelation 
is, "The end of the great tragedy of life. The 
beast has vanished ; the hissing of the unclean 
spirits has been silenced ; the Dragon, the old 
serpent called the Devil and Satan, is bound; the 



"WORSHIP GOD." 117 

tempest has ceased ; the thunders are hushed ; 
the smoke and the clouds are swept away ; the 
light shines, and the pinnacles of the Xew Jeru- 
salem come forth to view. Life is blessed in that 
city. There shall be no more curse, no more 
sorrow, no more crying, no more pain. God 
shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." 

You call that poetry, do you? Suppose it is 
poetry, what then? Xo poet ever yet equalled the 
fact which he poetized, as no painter ever yet 
mixed colors equal to those in nature. When 
the poetry is gone out of our life, it is like the 
sappiness gone out of the tree ; all that is left is 
sawdust. "Worship God" and the poetry will 
return into your dried-up lives, as the Psalmist 
suggests in the words, "Bless the Lord, O my 
soul, and all that is within me bless His holy 
name." 



IX. 

THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 



" Do not sin against the child." — Genesis, xlii : 22. 

THESE words were spoken by the eldest born 
of Israel's sons when there was a conspiracy 
among them to deprive Joseph of his birthright in 
the family. There are so many aspects of the 
great theme of the Incarnation that one must neces- 
sarily feel no little perplexity when obliged to 
select the ideas to be presented on any special 
occasion. So much must be left unsaid. Our 
theme at the best must be wretchedly incomplete. 
The Incarnation is the miracle of miracles. It is 
too subtle a theme for the Intellect. When we 
try to satisfy the mind we come to a point beyond 
which we cannot pass by any intellectual process. 
And yet, this limitation ought not to produce any 
kind of scepticism as to the fact itself. For all life 
in its origin is mysterious. And if the facts about 
it were not so common, if men were not born into 
the world everyday, we should doubtless perceive 
more readily than we do how very little indeed 

118 



TEE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 119 

man's part is in the production of any thing. 
All vital facts elude us. They are; but we cannot 
tell how they are. 

This we know, however, that intellect is not 
everything in us. Our nature comprises much 
else than the intellectual. There are facts for the 
heart of man which once apprehended never leave 
us. And this of the Incarnation is one. How 
shall Deity so reveal Himself to man as to win his 
confidence and love ? That is the great practical 
question of religion. The answer to that question 
is the Incarnation — God manifest in the flesh. 
If we were inclined to look at this fact philosophi- 
cally, it would be easy to show that in man's 
nature there is the inwrought expectation of an 
Incarnation. For what is idolatry but an attempt 
on man's part to bring God within human limita- 
tions? Jesus Christ satisfies that instinct in man 
which leads to idolatry. The instinct must be 
gratified. The Incarnation is the Divine answer 
to that instinct. Jesus coming into humanity 
becomes the heart of humanity. You cannot now 
put any one else than Jesus Christ at the centre of 
our life. In the Kingdom of Heaven, superiority 
of nature gives superiority of position. There is 
nothing arbitrary or forced in the supremacy of 
Jesus. 

In the Incarnation, God joins himself to our 
humanity as never before, joins himself to 



120 THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 

our childhood as well as to our manhood. And 
the fact that I want to put above every other in 
this morning's meditation is this, that God can 
and does speak through childhood as well as 
through fully developed manhood. Childhood is 
no hindrance to the work of the Spirit of God, 
but a necessary stage in the work, a stage which 
if lost can never be fully recovered. And as I am 
sure that we have never given sufficient thought 
to the meaning of the impressibility of childhood, 
and have never enough apprehended that our 
great religious opportunity is in the first few years 
of a child's life, — I shall use the brief time allotted 
to me at this Christmas service in a presentation of 
such ideas as may help towards a revision of our 
creed on this point. When we look at the babe 
of Bethlehem, is not the thought irresistible, God 
can speak to us through the helplessness of the 
babe. And when we watch that babe as it is 
hurried away from persecution, and think that 
it is carried in the fostering arms of motherhood, 
can we resist the thought, that the preservation of 
the Kingdom of God in the earth is dependent on 
the sanctification and consecration of motherhood ? 
The Incarnation is the elevation of mother- 
hood to a place it had never had in any heathen 
or pagan country. The preservation of God's 
Kingdom in the world is dependent, so it seems, 
on the sanctification of those human instincts which 



THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 121 

the Creator has sown in our nature. Surely that 
is a great enough truth to justify the Kingdom of 
God being hidden away in the infanthood of a 
babe. The tendency of religion has often been 
to say, crucify your social instincts. They are 
unholy and unclean. Christianity says, conse- 
crate them and they immediately become holy and 
clean. Christianity began with a consecrated 
childhood and a consecrated motherhood. Through 
these relationships God spake his first parental 
word in this dispensation in which we now live. 

If you will allow me the expression — all the 
gentlenesses and delicacies, all the modesties and 
sweet refinements of the Kingdom of God, were 
brought into human expression in that babe and 
that mother. That child stood for all children, 
that mother for all mothers thenceforth. God 
spake through that child in order that we might 
learn that He could speak and did speak through 
childhood. Why should God limit himself to the 
conditions of a child's nature ? Because there is a 
language to be spoken through the child which 
can never be spoken except through the child. 
Because there is a rebuke to be given to our proud 
grown-up intellectualism which arrogates to itself 
the prerogative of being God's voice and his only 
voice. And the reason why we have so often 
and so sorely missed the meaning of this childhood 
of Jesus as a part of the revelation of God is in 



122 THE CHILD AND HIS D UES. 

this — that we have thought of religion as 
something intellectual, simply — a matter of 
doctrines and creeds, and logical propositions. 
And have we not asked what can a child know of 
the truth or falsity of these ? A sufficient answer 
would be. — ' It will know just what its father and 
mother tell it, for a child is so constituted that it 
believes in its father and mother.' But we will 
not give that answer. TTe go deeper than that, 
and first of all deny that religion consists in 
doctrines and creeds and intellectual propositions, 
any more than a dinner consists of the printed 
receipts of a Cookery Book, Beligion is aback of 
these literary productions. It consists of love to 
God and love to man. 

Love is not an intellectual thing at all. The 
essence of the Christian religion is love. That 
elevates it above every other religion the human 
race has ever known. Can a child love ? Can it 
love father or mother? Can it depend on father 
and mother ? Can it confide in father or mother ? 
If so, it can love God. If so it can love man, for 
father and mother represent mankind to it. TTe 
who are adults love mankind to the extent (and 
only to the extent) to which we love the represen- 
tatives of it whom we know. 

Set God as lie is in Jesus Christ before the 
heart of a child, and will there be no response in 
that heart? Then there has been something 



TEE CEILD AXD EIS D UES. 128 

terribly atheistic iu the secondary parenthood of 
that child. The primary parenthood is in God — 
the secondary parenthood in man. I go aback of 
secondary parenthood, aback of all ideas — opinions, 
creeds and formularies of man's devising, and I 
aver that it is absolutely impossible in the nature 
of things that Almighty God can so form the 
spirits he puts into human bodies as that in them 
from the first there shall be a negative of Himself. 
The root of the error is in this assumption, that a 
child's nature is animal and irreligious, an idea 
that never originated in Christianity but in 

inism and gross materialism. A too narrow 
view of religion, and a too narrow view of child- 

:. have landed us in ideas and in practices 
which are most assuredly Anti-Christian. The 
view that religion is something to be learned from 
without and not something to be evolved from 
within, something intellectual, not affectional and 
vital, is at the root of this most serious error, an 
error so radical and serious that I verily believe 
that such theme- as that recently discussed over 
the Andover pr< ship, are the veriest trifles in 

comparison with it. If religion bo a mere 
intellectual acquirement like a knowledge of the 
history of philosophy, of coarse it would be 
ss to ex] ect children to know anything about 
it, or to have any experience of it. But ifrelij 
has its -eat in the heart and in the will, if it be 



124 THE CHILD AXD HIS DUES. 

far more affectional than intellectual, then wherever 
affection and will are operative, religion is alike 
capable of being brought into operation. If there 
be no affection and no will in a child there can be 
no religion, if there be affection and will there can 
be religion also. On this point there cannot be a 
doubt as to what is the Scripture position. The 
Book which contains such sentences as these 
" Out of the heart are the issues of life," " With 
the heart man believeth unto righteousness/' 
" TThosoever receiveth one such little child in my 
name receiveth me, but whosoever shall be a 
stumbling block in the way of these little ones 
which believe in me, it were better for him that a 
millstone were hanged about his neck and he 
drowned in the midst of the sea," I say as to the 
position of that Book on this question there can 
be no doubt. Then, why has the other position 
been held by so many, that religion is an intellec- 
tual and mental acquitment for adults and not an 
affectional relation towards God on the part of 
everyone? There is but one answer, "we err, 
not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of 
God." So long as any of us are under the blight 
of the error that in order to be in any degree 
religious, it is necessary to be capable of judging 
and weighing evidence pro and con, so long we 
shall feel justified in holding that a Christian 
church is a confederation of adult persons, or 



THE CHILD AND HIS LUES. 125 

persons who have arrived, as we say. at years of 
discretion. Bur if once we went to the Bible and 
bathed our souls in its baptismal waters, saturated 
ourselves with its spirit, it would be impos- 
tor us to take that position. Many things 
would stand in the way. many facts, many passages 
of Holy Scripture, but chiefest of all obstacles 
would be that which we think of to-day. the great 
fact of the Incarnation of our Lord and Savior 
is Christ. The babe at Bethlehem is the 
Divine Word in its tenderest and gentlest expres- 
sion. 

w. this mistake as to the seat of all true 
_v>n. that it is in the intellect and not in the 
heart, is by no means trivial. It must, of neces- 
sity, influence all our practical church lite. If 
children have divine relations and rights God- 
ward, and we do not recognize them, and in our 
ranee defraud the children of them, their 
whole life is likely to be of a different color and 
tendency from what it would otherwise be. It 
sy to see this. If we believe that religion 
has its -cat in the affections and not in the intel- 
shall perceive that the religious education 
of the child begins a- soon as it- affectional nature 
:eiving impressions. How soon is 
that? How soon doe- a child know enough to 
distinguish between its own mother and a >trai._ 

first years of a child's life are y< ars of 



126 THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 

impressions and nothing else. The age of reflec- 
tion has not come, nor will for some time. The 
plastic age is the first. Every clay, every hour, 
every moment, impressions are being made on the 
afiectional nature of the child, impressions which 
will last as long as that nature lasts. That being 
so, is it possible to over-estimate the value of 
those first years for the highest purposes of life ? 
I wish that it were a proper thing for me to 
reproduce in your hearing some of the glowing 
words of an American Divine not long since de- 
ceased, whose influence on the ministers of our 
English Churches has been greater than that of all 
other American divines put together. Speaking 
on this theme, to which I have been led this 
morning, he says — "I have no scales to measure 
quantities of effect in this matter of early training, 
but I may be allowed to express my solemn 
conviction, that more, as a general fact, is done, 
or lost by neglect of doing, on a child's immor- 
tality, in the first three years of his life, than in 
all his years of discipline afterwards." And again 
he says still more emphatically, "Let every 
Christian father and mother understand, when their 
child is three years old, that they have done more 
than half of all they will ever do for his character." 
It is very remarkable that the greatest of all 
Pre-Christian philosophers, Plato, held substan- 
tially the same view. And when He whose word 



THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 127 

to us is law, before whose utterances our opinions 
hide their diminished heads in the dust, when He 
said, "Suffer the little children to come unto me 
and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom 
of Heaven," was He not saying the same thins:, 
only in a divine way, as this Plato of the American 
pulpit ? 

But, some one might ask, how is it possible to 
give religious instruction to a child of three years 
of age? Religious instruction can be but little, 
but it is always safe to postpone religious 
instruction when the child is in the constant 
presence of religious character. Religious or ir- 
religious impressions are produced from the 
earliest times. And of these we are now speak- 
ing. They are the most important. Religious 
instruction is only a part of religious education. 
All education begins at the cradle and continues 
as long as life lasts. Connecting the two dispen- 
sations once again, the greatest mind of Pre- 
Christian times will help us as to this matter when 
he says, "The best way of training the young, is 
to train yourself; not to admonish them, but to be 
always carrying out your own principles in prac- 
tice." And our modern theological Plato says : 
"In this charge and nurture of infant children, 
nothing is to be done by an artificial lecturing 
process. The defect of our character is not to be 
made up by the sanctity of our words; we must 



128 THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 

be all that we would have our children feel and 
receive. Thus, if a man were to be set before a 
mirror, with the feeling that the exact image of 
what he is for the day, is there to be produced 
and left as a permanent and fixed image forever, 
to what carefulness, what delicate sincerity of 
spirit would he be moved. And will he be less 
moved to the same, when that mirror is the soul 
of his child?" 

Thus it comes to pass that though parents may 
withhold religious instruction from their children 
they cannot withhold religious education. For it 
goes on by a Divine law, over which we have no 
control. Whenever a stronger, a more fixed and 
determined nature comes into perpetual contact 
with a younger and more plastic nature, the latter 
is educated by the former. The former impresses 
itself upon it. Hence the importance of the 
associations which children form. Hence the sol- 
emn duty which is laid upon parents to discrimi- 
nate between the influences to which they subject 
their children. The more plastic the child the 
nobler in the long run will be his life, but the more 
care is necessary in its beginnings. I know that 
there is the Unseen Spirit of God working on the 
spirit of the child all the time. That spirit is 
stirring the mind into thought and the heart into 
feeling. But God has decreed that the ordinance 
of parenthood shall be the most powerful in all 



THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 129 

this world. Richard Baxter, the author of the 
Saint's Rest, gave it as his judgment that "Family 
instruction and government are God's appoint- 
ed means of conversion — public ordinances of 
edification." 

That may be the law to which practically there 
are exceptions, but this we may say unhesitat- 
ingly, that never can the Church of God do its 
Divinely-appointed work till there is intelligent 
co-operation between it and the family. And this 
also, that nothing outside the family can ever be 
powerful enough to neutralize the influence of 
family life if it be irreligious or to thoroughly 
undo its influences if it be religious. It is not 
conceivable that any one should ever love a child 
as a parent loves it, and therefore it is not 
conceivable that parents should ever deliberately 
do anything whereby their children may be in- 
jured. But error and love may dwell together in 
the same heart ; ignorance and love may dwell to- 
gether. There may be no perception of the rela- 
tion of religion to happiness, no perception of the 
relation of the Christ of God to the development 
of character. 

Men and women of average goodness, who would 
do anything in the world they thought necessary 
for the world-life of their children, have not got 
their eyes open to perceive that happiness depends 
on the within more than on the without. They do 



130 THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 

not for a moment despise Jesus Christ and His 
work, but they assume that religion can be left to 
take care of itself. They do not see that the presen- 
tation of Christ to the soul awakes into life some- 
thing which is otherwise dormant. The question 
whether there is anything in Christ to touch into 
feeling and hope and confidence, a child's heart, 
has not been seriously considered. How it is, I 
know not, but the fact remains that even christian- 
ized people do not see how studiously our Lord 
identifies himself with the cause of the little child, 
and the cause of the poor and unfortunate, and 
every true minister will do the same. Our clients 
are those w T ho cannot speak for themselves — 
the little child that cannot speak what it feels, the 
little child with its innate ideas, ideas not orig- 
inated by teaching, ideas which are emotions strug- 
gling within, which God has inwrought into the 
soul ; and the poor who dare not speak out what 
they feel, who have so generally in the past ages 
of the world been robbed and wronged ; Christ 
identified himself with these. Let us not forget that 
w T herever there is religious feeling, there is religious 
life. This religious feeling in childhood is to be 
developed as the basis of religious action in man- 
hood. It is in the soul of man as it was in the 
creation of this material world. First of all there 
was the chaos, the sweltering surging waters, and 
the spirit of God moving on the face of the waters. 



THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 131 

But out of it came the Cosmos — the Divine or- 
der — the solid earth with its mineral wealth and 
its treasures of coal ready for the habitation of 
man ; but the solidity followed the liquidity ; and 
so it is with a human soul. At first there is relig- 
ious feeling, out of which under proper culture and 
the o'erbrooding spirit of God, will grow the solid, 
indestructible convictions of manhood and woman- 
hood. But, if you repress the feeling, and throw 
cold water on it when it glows in childhood, how 
are you to get your convictions in manhood? You 
have destroyed the material out of which convic- 
tions are made. 

Before the animal passions begin to assert them- 
selves, as in youth or early manhood, there should 
have been evolved in the soul a religious love which 
shall control and moderate them and bring them 
under the power of reason. And so it should be 
evident that there is no possibility of beginning too 
early with religious culture, providing we mean by 
it Christ and his spirit and temper. Everything 
of an abstract nature, and especially everything 
controversial must be postponed. Jesus — what 
he was, what he said, what he did ; this is all 
that a child needs, and it really does seem as though 
God had made special provision in the method of 
the New Testament literature, in its parables and 
miracles for the child's nature. While the deep- 
est meaning is profound enough for the philoso- 



132 THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 

pher, the surface teaching is simple enough for 
the child. 

But I must not take liberties with your atten- 
tion, although no theme is of greater practical 
importance, and none deserves more thorough 
treatment. 

So long as we are in fetters to the idea that 
religion has its seat in the intellect, so Ions: the 
children of our day will be defrauded of their 
rights in the kingdom of Christ. TThen once we 
are converted to the scriptural position that the 
seat of religion is in the aifectional region, then 
children will begin to have their souls recognized 
as well as their bodies ; never till then. The in- 
tellectual view of religion limits God's relation to 
the soul of man. It limits the sphere of the oper- 
ation of the Spirit of God. It limits the area of 
Christ's atonement by virtually making it depend 
on intellectual apprehension, thus confining its 
results to adult life. It limits and pauperizes 
human nature. It puts religion on the same level 
with mathematics, biology, geology, philosophy, 
something to be acquired mentally. It makes 
God's will to be limited by man's will, and makes 
the Almighty wait as a servant at man's door to 
ask permission of his creature to begin his work 
on the soul. Thus, this intellectual view of relig- 
ion is dishonoring to man and God both. The 
Ptolemaic system of astronomy was superseded 



THE CHILD AND HIS D UES. 133 

generation- ago. The Ptolemaic system of re- 
ligion remains still — man with his proud intellect 
at the centre, not God with his unchanging love. 
When our Lord took a little child and set him in 
the midst of the disciples and said that that little 
child was the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven, 
He, by that act, overturned the religion of mere 
intelleetualism and established a religion in 
which the affectional was uppermost. The affec- 
tional was predominant in that child. Greatness 
.always has its -eat in the affections. There never 
reat nature in which the affectional was 
predominant. Of course if there be no affec- 
i 11 your child there can be no religion. And 
the depth, the strength, the force, the fervor, the 
glow of religious conviction in any soul will be in 
exact relation to the depth, the force, the strength 
ion in that soul. Selfishn hem- 

and calculation eat out the capacity for 
religiousness in a soul because they eat out its 
capacity fur affection. 

Let us not forget that there i< only one be- 
ginning to any life, and everything in the life 
begins then. You cannot begin a religious life at 
forty or fifty without beginning it under disadvan- 
- which • >us. NTor can you begin it at 

iy without - that need not 

be. Th _ :i or irreligion are 

in the eaj >re its existence 



134 THE CHILD AND HIS DUES. 

is recognized. Even Calvin, speaking of infancy, 
says, " The work of God in the soul is not without 
existence because it is unobserved and not 
understood by us." We forget that everything 
that is in manhood is in germ in childhood — 
everything. There is nothing added in after 
years, no new faculty, no new power. It is all 
there from the first. And that which is strongest 
in manhood is that which has been fed and tutored 
into predominance. The whole Kingdom of 
Christ lay folded up in that babe at Bethlehem. 
It was there in its quietest, its gentlest and 
sweetest expression. And in every babe there is 
religious capacity. If not, in the babe there will 
never be in the man. Oh then, do not sin against 
the child. Do not rob it of its place in the family. 
Do not defraud it of its birthright. As soon as it 
can know anything let it know that it has a father 
and mother on earth because it has a father in 
Heaven, a Deliverer from all evil in Jesus the 
Christ, let this be the basis truth on which its 
nature is built. And then if in the stormy years 
of temptation that follow, it should ever be 
tempted to the folly and madness of the prodigal, 
and leave the shelter of a Father's House to spend 
its substance in riotous living, there is a hope, 
amounting almost to an assurance, that when it 
comes to itself, the first truth it knew will assert 
its power and the erring soul will turn its footsteps 



THE GUILD AND HIS DUES. 135 

back with, the resolve. " I will arise and go to my 
Father and will say unto him, • Father I have 
sinned against Heaven and before thee, and am no 
more worthy to be called thy son.' ?J 



X. 

A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 



But covet earnestly the best gifts. And yet shew I unto you a 
more excellent way. — I Cor., xii : 31. 

THESE words of the Apostle have a backward 
and a forward look. There is the way 
which he has just trodden and the "more excel- 
lent way" which he is about to show. TTe must 
know both ways before we can estimate the greater 
excellency of the one over the other. Searching 
into the chapter at the very end of which are the 
words of our text, what do we find as its theme? 
"Now concerning Spiritual gifts." These words 
contain it. Following, step by step, the leading 
of the Apostle's thought, we learn that these men 
and women to whom he writes had been Gentile 
idolators, much in the same condition of mind and 
life as we find the Hindoos and Chinese to-day. 
But they had been changed from this condition, 
had been converted as we say, and were disciples 
of Christ. The Apostle attributes this discipleship 
to the operation of the Holy Spirit of God upon 

136 



A MORE EXCELLENT WA F, 137 

their minds. "Xo man speaking by the Holy 
Spirit, (under His influence) calleth Jesus anath- 
ema, and no man can say that Jesus is the Lord 
but by the Holy Spirit." And that which was 
true of these men and women of Corinth is equally 
true of us. If Jesus Christ be Lord to us we have 
the evidence in ourselves of having been and being 
under the power of the Holy Spirit of God. Then 
the Apostle proceeds to speak of spiritual gifts, 
the results of the unseen operation of the Spirit of 
God as manifested in the Christian church of that 
day. There would naturally be among new con- 
verts a propensity to assume that some one class 
of gifts was orthodox and others questionable. 
Perplexity and confusion would arise. And so 
the Apostle warns them against ' limiting the Holy 
One of Israel.' He tells them there are 'diversi- 
ties of gifts,' ' differences of administration,' that 
as in material nature so in spiritual nature, variety 
is not inconsistent with unity. One man is wise, he 
has excellent judgment ; another man seems to 
have an intuitiveness of knowledge ; another man 
has strong faith; another the gift of healing; 
another the gift of prophecy ; another can work 
miracles; another discerns spirits; another has 
the gift of tongues ; and still another the interpre- 
tation of tongues. Now, we cannot stay this 
morning to inquire particularly as to the nature 
of these gifts, how far they were the quickening 



138 A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 

of the natural by the intense action of the super- 
natural upon it, so that each gift followed the law 
of the natural propensity of the individual, that or 
something else. All that is necessary to our pur- 
pose is to point to the truth emphasized by the 
Apostle, that the power underneath all, was the 
self-same Spirit of God, and that the Sovereignty 
of God was shown in the distribution and operation 
of the gifts, "dividing to every man severally as 
He will? 

The Apostle goes on to show that the diversity 
is not simply consistent with Unity, but required 
in order to Unity. Oneness is not unity. 
Individualism is not unity. Many there be who 
contend for the unity of the Godhead, but all the 
while they mean the Individualism of the Godhead. 
Unity comes of diversity. The Apostle illustrates 
this by reference to the human body. The foot, 
the hand, the ear, the eye, the members, are all 
different. The eye cannot hear. The ear cannot 
see. The foot has no ability of doins; the work 
of the hand. Every part has its own special 
office, and the total result is not schism but unit3 r . 
If the hand were to put out the eye the hand itself 
would be a loser. Pain in one part means 
discomfort everywhere. Each part serves every 
other part, and serves it all the more effectively 
by being different from it. " \Thether one mem- 
ber suffer, all the members suffer with it ; or one 



A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 139 

member be honored all the members rejoice with 
it." This is so iD the material body which the 
Apostle uses as an illustration and suggests his 
ideal of a perfect church, though the ideal be far 
ahead of present attainment. In the church there 
are Apostles, but all are not apostles ; there are 
teachers, but all men are not teachers; there are 
times of miracle, but all times are not conditioned 
for the miraculous ; there are gifts of healing, but 
very few men have them, all do not speak with 
tongues, all have not the interpretation of tongues, 
and yet some have. These are the gifts, in all 
their manifold variety, all when genuine and true 
tending towards unity. These gifts have been of 
great value to the church. Those we differentiate 
by the word < miraculous ' belong to times when, 
without some unquestioned sign of the Divine 
presence and power, men could not stand before 
the terrific opposition brought to bear against them. 
There are ages in which the excellency of a thing 
is not enough to win acceptance for it, ay, ages in 
which the more supernal the excellency, the more 
violent will be the opposition. In such ages men 
and their message have to be protected by some 
such aureole of glory as only God Himself can 
throw around their brows. Miracles, wonders 
and signs are not so much for the conviction of the 
unbeliever as for the protection of the 4 believer, 
AVe do not find that even the raising of Lazarus 



140 A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 

was of much, if any use, for evangelistic purposes. 
Men only deceive themselves when they assume 
that their disposition Godward would be changed 
by any visitations from the world of spirits. If 
there he anything in what is called " Spiritualism" 
it is certain that its effect has been all the other 
way. It has demoralized men instead of promo- 
ting in them holy character. And so, while the 
miracles of our Lord were revelations of Divine 
Power and of a Kingdom of Heaven, while th€y 
overawed many unbelievers, they did not convert 
them. 

Now, in these days of ours, we are often in a 
state of rebellion because we cannot command 
signs and wonders. God's promises are that he 
will come down " as rain upon the mown grass," 
"as showers that water the earth," " I will be as 
the dew unto Israel " a gentle, constant, fructifying 
influence. But we want freshets to bear away the 
bridges,- and make a loud report. We have very 
little faith in what our Lord Himself says, that 
" the Kingdom of God cometh not with observa- 
tion."" We want Pentecost, with its tongues of 
flame, and its mighty rushing wind, but are we 
ready for the outside persecutions, the tortures, 
the deaths, the Herodian t3'rannies and all the 
terrific opposition which in the one direction cor- 
responded to Pentecost in the other? Pentecost 
was God's answer to man's demoniac hatred. No 



A MORE EXCELLENT WA F, 141 

men, without a Pentecostal baptism, would have 
dared to face such a frowning world as that which 
glared upon the Apostles. And when you and I 
are called to face the fires of martyrdom we shall 
have Pentecostal power in which to face them. It 
is enough for all ordinary purposes if our Lord be 
with us "as the dew," "as the rain," "as the 
showers that water the earth," if we live spiritu- 
ally in a dispensation of the Spirit as we live 
naturally in a dispensation of the sunlight. Our 
Gocl never acts arbitrarily. Not only the times 
and the seasons, but the spiritual proprieties and 
necessities of the times and seasons are in His 
hand and under His sovereign control. He sriveth 
to every age as to every man, "severally as He 
will." 

And now I want that we should specially notice 
that this Apostle says there is " a more excellent 
way" to the attainment of the end sought by God, 
than this way of miracle and wonder and sign. 
He says, " seek earnestly the best gifts," but the 
time will come when it will appear that these gifts 
are inferior to something else. The time will 
come when speaking with tongues, gifts of healing, 
working miracles, all these signs and wonders 
will be seen as provisional and temporary. In 
the very nature of things they cannot be continued. 
Their continuation would make them common- 
place. They would lose their uses and cease to 



142 A MORE EXCELLENT WA T. 

be of service. That which God seeks for man 
can be accomplished when the world is ready for 
it by some agency whose permanency will not 
make it commonplace — viz., by the existence 
and cultivation of that state of heart which is 
expressed in the one word "charity." It is a 
very remarkable thing, and will appear more and 
more noteworthy, the longer we ponder it, that 
this Apostle, living in the time of miracle and 
wonder and sign, and able to estimate the exact 
result of these, should yet boldly subordinate 
them, as evangelistic agencies, to the power of 
Christian charity, giving them an inferior and 
temporary place. These Pentecostal manifesta- 
tions, for which we so often sigh, thinking, in our 
ignorance that if only we had them, the supremacy 
of the church as a Divine Institute would be 
universally acknowledged, and "a nation born in 
a day," St. Paul counts as provisional and 
inadequate to the ends which, we assume, they 
would further. TTe want something for the eye, 
something for the ear, something sensuous, the 
Kingdom of God coming with observation. Better 
than all these if only you could get it, says the 
Apostle, would be charity — that Christian love 
which is the strongest and most powerful of all 
Divine creations. " For though I speak with the 
tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, 
I am become as sounding brass and tinkling cym- 



A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 143 

bals. And though I have the gift of prophecy and 
>rstand all mysteries ai knowledge; and 

igh I have all faith, so that I could remove 
mountains, (for there is trememdous energy in 
faith) and have not charity, I am nothing." He 

■ further still, and John the Baptist like, lays 
the axe to the root of the tree. — *• Though I 
bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though 
I give my body to be burned and have not charity, 
rh me nothing. " This is startling doctrine. 
Lt undeniably A" lie. A man may 

have these gifts referred to. and yet may fall 
short ' of having attained to any possession 
of the central thing in Christianity, that which 
distinguishes it from every false religion, and 
every corrupt form of a true religion the world 
ha- ever known. Men may have the energy ol 
faith and very little if any charity. What seems 
stranger still, they may be large and liberal givers 
of money to th :, ^:A nut have charity. 

They may even ^o to the martyr's stake and not 
have charity. All donations of money are 
of charity. All martyr-deaths are not 
ve to God and love to man. 
Many a man has been so self-willed, and so i 
ramed with passion, inate that he would rath- 

er die than give in. Many a man has willed away 
money to the poor simply because lie could net 
hold it any longer, or because the solicitation w^ 



144 A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 

too urgent, or because he must save appearances, 
or because his conscience was not very easy as to 
the way in which he obtained his money. For as 
one has recently said in a published exposition of 
the Lord's Prayer, when we pray, " Give us this 
day our daily bread," our bread. " Bread that 
we beg is not ours ; bread that we take as lazy 
pensioners on some one else's bounty, is not ours ; 
bread that we steal is not ours ; bread that we get 
from other people . by fraud and extortion and 
over-reaching is not ours ; only the bread that we 
have earned by honest work and fair traffic is 
ours." That which a man gives heartily and 
lovingly is perfumed with the incense of charity 
— not that which he gives grudgingly and of 
necessity. 

I dare not take liberties with your time, and 
therefore it is not possible for me to enter into 
any adequate analysis as to what this charity, 
exalted to the highest place and to the grandest 
power by this Apostle, is. All we can say about 
it is, that whatever " suffereth long and is kind, 
whatever envieth not, whatever vaunteth not 
itself and is not puffed up, whatever doth not be- 
have itself unseemly, whatever seeketh not her 
own, and is not easily provoked, whatever disposi- 
tion is in any of us to think good and not evil, 
always putting us on the side of the best construc- 
tion of a deed and not the worst, whatever does 



A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 145 

not rejoice in iniquity, whatever rejoiceth in the 
truth, whatever beareth all things, believeth all 
things (good that is), hopeth all things, and en- 
dureth all things," that is charity. The opposite 
of all these is not charity. Charity is inconsistent 
with petulance, with unkindness, with envy, with 
boasting and self-conceit and self-importance, 
with unseemliness in behavior, with the attribu- 
ting of evil motive, with self-seeking and all 
these ugly and evil things. A man may have zeal 
and no charity, yea faith enough to be very ener- 
getic and have no charity, have sundry useful 
gifts and no charity. Charity is eternal, undying, 
everlasting ; it never faileth. The nearest thing 
on earth to it is a mother's love. It is the atmo- 
sphere of the society of Heaven. It is the 
dominating characteristic of redeemed, godlike 
souls. It gives a certain type and flavor of 
character wherever it exists. It gives to the mind 
broadness and comprehensiveness. It gives to 
the heart tenderness and loveableness. It is the 
concentrated essence of all the Evangelistic forces 
that have ever been in the church from the first 
day of its life to the day that now is. 

And if the Church of Christ were richly 
dowered with the will and ability to tread this 
more excellent way it would not need to sigh for 
Pentecostal signs and ivonders. Its power would 
be irresistible. But it would be the power of 



146 A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 

life, not the mechanical power of any ecclesias- 
tical instrument that has ever been formed or 
can be. 

By means of artificial heat, kindled in glowing 
furnaces, with the frost shut out, it is possible to 
have flowers and fruits in winter, but when once 
the summer sun pours down its June rays no 
artificial contrivances are needed. And so when 
once there is the reality of the religion of Jesus, 
the Divine charity of which this inspired Apostle 
speaks, the excellency of the v way will be 
perceived. Some there be who ever cry, "we 
want more faith." But faith, my brother, cannot 
be a substitute for charity, and can perenni- 
ally live only in an atmosphere charged with 
charity, as plants in an atmosphere charged 
with oxygen. 

Others say we want more zeal, but zeal may 
be only like a galvanic battery moving the muscles 
of a corpse. Charity will do all and everything 
that zeal can do, or that faith can do, or that 
tongues can do, or that even miraculous gifts can 
do. And yet how few believe it. But no man, 
without twisting Scripture, can deny the Aposto- 
licity of the teaching. 

Who then, in the light of this teaching, are the 
men and women who are most truly representa- 
tive of the church of Christ, who really embody 
its spirit, and carry forward its work? The 



A MORE EXCELLENT "AT. 143 

answer •: — fch 

hich the Apostle speaks. Paul and John 
the _ itest apostles because they 
mos: richly lowered with chari 



XI. 
THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHRIST. 



"That in all things he might have the pre-eminence.'' — Col., 
i: IS. 

NO one reading the opening passages of this 
letter of the great Apostolic letter-writer 
can be in doubt as to the estimate he formed of 
the personality of Jesus ; his mind and heart are so 
possessed with Him that all things in heaven and 
earth are viewed as having their interpretation in 
Him. The Eternal One is spoken of as "the 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." That is 
enough for the mind of Paul. That is all he wants 
to know. All creation cannot tell as much of God 
as is told in the simple fact that He was " the 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." The mind of 
Paul is at rest as regards the Divine disposition 
towards him. His awe remains, but all base fear 
has gone. There is happiness enough in this one 
fact, that he and those to whom he wrote had been 
" delivered out of the power of darkness and 
translated into the Kingdom of the Son of his 

148 



THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CUBIST. 149 

love." And then he proceeds to heap up thought 
upon thought as though he could not get the in- 
ward feeling into anything like adequate utterance. 
44 In Him we have redemption," "In Him we 
have forgiveness of sins," " He is the image of 
the invisible God," He is " the first-born of every 
creature." " In Him were all things created, in 
the heavens and upon the earth — things visible 
and things invisible — whether thrones or domin- 
ions or principalities, or powers ; all things have 
been created unto Him and through Him ; He is 
before all things ; in Him all things are held 
together. 

He is the head of the body, the church, who is 
the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in 
all things he might have the pre-eminence. For 
it was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him 
should all the fulness dwell ; and through Him to 
reconcile all things unto Himself, having made 
peace through the blood of his cross ; through 
Him I say, whether things upon the earth or 
things in the heavens." 

I would like to ask Paul what he meant by 
some of these utterances. It takes a Paul fully to 
interpret a Paul. But this much we may say, 
without any possibility of being in the wrong, 
that to the Apostle Paul Jesus Christ was 
immeasurably more than He is to you and me. 
Great natures are certain to be the depositaries of 



150 THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHRIST. 

great ideas, great feelings, great hopes, great 
aspirations. Greatness does not mean bulkiness. 
It means the ability of thinking great thoughts, 
letting in great ideas, following in the line of 
great aspirations and doing it continuously as long 
as life shall last. It is a question whether upon 
earth a greater man has ever lived than the writer 
of this letter. He has been before the world, with 
his bundle of letters, for 1800 years, and every 
generation of Christians has found Him ahead of 
them. I question whether there be a man living 
who can say as much about Jesus Christ in the 
same number of words as St. Paul has said in that 
passage I have read. 

I think, however, that if there be any one 
expression which holds in it all the rest, it is this, 
"that in all things he might have the pre-emi- 
nence." Let us analyze this pre-eminence and see 
in what it consists : — 

1. He is pre-eminent as to His personality. In 
the midst of all who have ever been in this world, 
He stands unique as to human character ; — leaving 
out, for the moment, all thought of everything 
that rises above the human ; if we had time to go 
into a detailed search after all the elements in His 
make-up to which the word human could properly 
be applied, we should be compelled to say that 
He is pre-eminently human. He came into the 
world through the gateway of the Hebrew nation, 



THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHRIST. 151 

and yet He is not a Jew. He belonged, so far as 
time could put a date upon Him, to the period of 
1880 years ago, and yet He is of no age. He 
spent His days and nights under those insufferably 
bright eastern heavens, and yet He is of no clime. 
As we study His character, and then study the 
records of character which have come down to us 
of other peoples, we are obliged to confess that He 
gathers up into Himself all the best elements in 
Jewish life, in Grecian life, in Roman life. The 
characteristic Hebrew elements were such as we 
indicate by the words, "moral" and "devotional." 
Grecian life was elegant, refined and sensuous. 
It was occupied with feelings of natural beauty. 
Roman life was swayed by ideas of law, of empire 
and world-wide dominion. Your memory will 
furnish you with illustrative passages in proof of 
what I say that all these ideas were in the mind 
of Jesus Christ, not excluding or controverting 
one another, or jostling one another, but holding 
fellowship one with another. They were there in 
their purest and best expression. We need not 
stay upon the proof that He was pre-eminently 
moral and devotional ; enemies as well as friends 
admit that. But lie was devotional without being 
formal, and moral without any approach to pru- 
dishness. But how about His gathering up into 
Himself the best elements in Grecian life? Search 
and see how all things beautiful affect Him. 



152 THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHRIST. 

" Behold the lilies how they grow, they toil not, 
neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that 
even Solomon in all his glory, was not arrayed 
like one of these." His love for country scenes, 
never once sleeping in a city ; His retirement into 
the recesses of nature for devotional and teaching 
purposes ; His unconcealed admiration of the white 
marble temple which rose lustrous and massive in 
the midst of the squalor of the streets of Jerusa- 
lem, His love of garden beauty, His constant use 
of natural symbols to illustrate His teachings, 
these are evidence enough of His being in sympa- 
thy w r ith all that was beauteous, a very Greek for 
sensitiveness. But how about His gathering up 
into Himself all the best elements in the life of 
Rome, its appreciation of law and rule and domin- 
ion ? His glorification of the moral law ; and His 
refusal to utter one word that would be seditious, 
though a Ca3sar w r as on the throne, His ready 
payment of the usual poll-tax when asked of Him 
and His disciples, these are sufficient to illustrate 
the first. And but one quotation is necessary to 
prove the truth of the assertion that with all that 
was pure and great in the aspirations of Rome, for 
Empire and world-wide dominion He was in 
sympathy. With Rome it was the simple ambition 
for power, with Jesus the aspiration of universal 
benevolence — a sympathy with all men every- 
where, and thus a burning desire to bring them 



THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHRIST. 153 

under the rule of One God and Father, that uni- 
versal brotherhood might be established. "When 
the Son of man shall come in His glory and all 
His Holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon 
the throne of His glory and before Him shall be 
gathered all nations.'' Thus we see how pre-emi- 
nent was His personality. He was neither Jew, 
nor Greek, nor Eoman, and yet all that was dis- 
tinctive and characteristic in Jew and Greek and 
Roman was illustrated in Him. 

2. Then again he was pre-eminent as to his 
i of G d and man. Let me say that this is 
always the test of pre-eminence of nature, large- 
• of idea on these two all-absorbing themes. 
The man who is pre-eminently great and good, 
will necessarily have the most ennobling ideas 
on these two themes. And you may be very 
sure that the instinct in our nature to regard with 
suspicion and distrust the Satanic school who first 
of all, deprive God of His personality, and then 
man of his spirit, is ingrained and inborn. It is 
the same kind of instinct which the dove has when 
the bird of prey comes into sight. If any one 
say- <* It i- only an instinct of self-preservation," 
what of it? Is not that saying a great deal? It' 
there were no lust of sinning in our nature, and 
no desire to have doubts enough to allow us to do 
it unrestrainedly, there is not an Infidel Lecturer 
in the world who could pay his travelling expenses 



154 THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHRIST. 

out of his earnings. The right idea of God is 
always an inspiration to a good man ; it is a 
restraint, a fetter on an evil man. Jesus Christ 
came specially to give us right ideas of the nature 
of God and man. The idea He gave us of God 
was pre-eminent. No one had ever approached 
it. To be able to utter it and live it, gives this 
Jesus a pre-eminence as a thinker who personal- 
ized his own thinking as no one else ever did. 
He gave us an idea of God that made God " an 
absolutely new being to our race." There had 
been many attempts to name God, to put the 
nature of God into a word, but every attempt had 
fallen short of this which Jesus made, and must 
fall short, for the reason that it takes a Jesus 
Christ to give such utterance to the word 
"Father" as shall make it mean what it does 
mean. Words are variable as to their quality and 
quantity, according to the quality and quantity of 
the speaker. The words of Scripture on your 
lips and mine — how poverty-stricken, compared 
with the same words as spoken by Jesus of 
Nazareth ! So much of religious effort has been 
occupied in emptying the words of Jesus of their 
spiritual content, that they may be made to fit the 
poverty of our ideas. " The thought of an Eter- 
nal Father, ruling in love, through righteousness, 
towards lovely and righteous ends — that thought 
of the Eternal, brooding in ceaseless pity, working 



THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CUEIST. 155 

in untiring energy in all the units for the good 
alike of the single person and the collective race, 
that idea was the splendid gift of Christ to man." 
There was never any such large idea of God in the 
world before Christ came, but since, such ideas 
have been struggling into form, and other ideas 
which naturally flow from them, and now men 
who make no confesssion of mental and spiritual 
allegiance to Christ are often found uttering 
thoughts which had no existence in the speech of 
the world in Anti-Christian times. Infidel minds 
are sometimes found clothed in raiment of 
Christian ideas, and are innocently unconscious 
from whence they have plagiarized their clothes. 
Indeed, as one has said, " Christ's idea of God has 
so entered into and possessed the spirit of man 
that he cannot expel it or escape from it. It is 
now His, even in spite of Himself, for ever." 

Add to the idea which Jesus has given us of the 
nature of God, His idea of the nature of man. In 
the Anti-Christian days the noblest man among 
the Jews was the chief of the Pharisees or the 
chief of the Sadducees. Among the Greeks the 
noblest man was the most physically beautiful 
man, the Apollo Belvidere was the type of him. 
Anions the Romans the noblest man was one of 
the type of Julius Caesar, the simply strong man, 
the man of achievement, though in order to 
achieve he trampled everyone who was in his path 



156 THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHBIST. 

in the dust. How is it now in Christian lands? 
Under the influence of Jesus, the noblest man is 
not simply the bravest man, but "the gentlest, 
the humanest, the chastest, and the most charita- 
ble." It is a new idea of man, and entirely 
Christian in its completeness. This kind of man 
is man with the lost image restored. This kind 
of man must be immortal, for the life of the 
immortal God is in him. Why should he die? 
He is in harmony with the Universe. Everything 
in it conspires to say to him, live; and to help 
him to live. And so the revelation of Immortality 
naturally and necessarily comes with the emergence 
into being of this Christian type of man. It takes 
an immortal spirit to hold in it the idea of 
immortality. 

Take one or two other ideas characteristically 
Christian which will help us to see how pre-emi- 
nently Christ Jesus is the world's greatest thinker 
as well as holiest man. The idea of the universal 
brotherhood of man ; the idea that love of God is 
expressed in service of man ; the idea that the 
original image of God, though lost to sight in so 
many, may be latent in the worst, a jewel at the 
centre of a dung-heap ; — these are ideas floating 
up and down the world to-day, and wherever they 
enter the soul of man, entering it to stay, and 
making men restless until society is harmonized 
with these ideas. Many men wilfully refuse to 



THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHRIST. 157 

live under the shadow of this Tree of Life, Jesus 
Christ, but unconsciously they are eating of the 
fruit of the tree. Viewed intellectually as well as 
morally, this Jesus of Nazareth has the pre-emi- 
nence. His ideas of God and man are immeasur- 
ably vaster than any other ideas which have been 
flung into the world's life. Intellectually He has 
the pre-eminence. 

And yet once more He is pre-eminent as to His 
mission in the world. No other ever came on 
such a mission ; no other was ever capable of 
entertaining the idea of it. The very conception 
of such a mission puts Him into the place of pre- 
eminence. What was it? To bring a revolted 
world back again into allegiance. Think for a 
moment what that means. Into allegiance — into 
such allegiance as is worthy of God to accept, and 
of man to give. Not forced allegiance. Not the 
allegiance which the conqueror gets when the 
commander-in-chief on the other side delivers up 
his sword. Not simply the allegiance which the 
slave, beggared in spirit as in everything else, 
gives to the Master whom he has no power to 
resist — No, no such allegiance is unworthy of 
a God to receive. Nothing satisfies love but love, 
nothing satisfies reason but that which is endorsed 
by reason, nothing satisfies sincerity but sincerity, 
and so it would be unworthy of God to receive 
from man anything short of that sincere, reasona- 



158 THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CUBIST. 

ble, intelligent, loving allegiance, which is the only 
true allegiance. But we need not complicate the 
matter, wherever there is one spark of real love 
all else follows. And so we hear our Lord saying 
in justification of His receiving the sinning woman, 
"Her sins which are many are all forgiven for 
she loved much." 

To bring a world into this sincere, reasonable, 
intelligent, loving allegiance towards God is the 
mission which Jesus the Christ set Himself. It is 
either the work of a God or of a madman. But 
as a madman could never even conceive of such a 
mission, the conception in itself shows the pre- 
eminence of the nature in which it dwelt. 

The accomplishment of this mission seems to 
you and me impossible. Think what is involved 
in it. Nay, you cannot. We often use the word 
"regeneration," but we know not what it im- 
plies. It is a word expressing some spirit- 
ual process which lies out of the region of our 
observation. We know the signs of it, but of 
the process we know nothing. When a man 
adheres through all temptations and persecutions, 
through all the flatteries of prosperity, and the 
despondencies of adversity to the Christ of God 
as his Redeemer and Savior, we know that he is 
regenerated. When like Job, he says, (meaning 
it), "though he slay me, yet will I trust in him/' 
we know he is regenerated. But when and how, 



THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHRIST. 159 

that we know not. We say, by the power of the 
Holy Spirit of God. because it is so revealed, and 
because it must be by a power greater than the 
human, greater than any power that man can 
exert. Yet this is the mission which this Jesus 
has undertaken : to regenerate the alienated heart 
of manhood, to bring it in loving, glad allegiance 
to the throne of God. Knowing what man is, 
knowing, as Solomon said ages ago, that < ; a 
brother offended is harder to be won than a strong 
city," knowing how much the human will can 
endure and not bend, knowing how even a preju- 
dice, when it gets into a human spirit, can hold out 
against the strongest arguments, the most forcible 
reasons, the most persistent acts of benevolence 
and kindness — knowing all this, does it not seem 
more easily possible to swing the Universe out of 
its orbit, destroy its balance, and bring back chaos 
and old night, than to accomplish this restoration 
to loving allegiance of the alienated heart of man ? 
Certainly this Jesus Christ must see in the deeps 
of man's nature more than we see, and lie must 
know of forces in the spiritual realm, behind this 
material realm, stronger and more persuasive than 
we know of. Leaving all that is merely specula- 
five, we assert that the very conception of such a 
mission putsthis 3 sua Christ pre-eminently above 
all other men who have ever lived on this earth. 
The themi aly half finished, not half 



160 THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHB1ST 

indeed, for I have given you nothing more than a 
few suggestions, but I must leave it. It is only 
a portrait in outline, nay, not so much, only a 
few sketchy strokes. 

If only it helps any human soul struggling into 
the light, any soul fighting the billows of doubt 
and trying to get to land, to some terra firma on 
which the foot can rest, it will not be in vain that 
we have tried to make it clear how in His person- 
ality, in the greatness of His ideas of God and 
man, and in His mission to this world, this Jesus 
Christ was not simply eminent as many men have 
been, but emphatically and unapproachably 
pre-eminent. A theology of abstract ideas is no 
theology at all. It is but the shadow of a 
theology. The substance is elsewhere. A theol- 
ogy which has not in it, in the place of pre-emi- 
nence, the person, the ideas, the mission of Christ 
is chaff and not bread. And so while we cannot 
measure the nature of Christ, if only we can see 
that He is pre-eminent in these particulars I have 
specified, we have enough for a foundation for all 
the religion of which our nature is capable. 

I know of but one conspicuous man in the world 
of literature, the bitterness of whose malignity 
was such as to blind his eyes to all moral and 
spiritual beauty and allow him to cry out 
" JEcrasez V infame" — Crush the wretch. If 
that man lives on in eternity no other punishment 



vminen 7BBL3T. 161 

! surely be asked by bis bitterest enemy than 

that it should be for ever remembered that he 

1 those words in writing of Jesus the Christ. 

her great sceptics have seen the pre-eminence 

and have acknowledged it ; as though God 

employed one sceptic to shame another. Even 

sseau, "that soul ever floating between error 

truth," lost its hesitation, and with a hand lirm 

a- a martyr's, forgetting his age and his works, the 

philosopher wrote with the pen of a theologian a 

which was to become the counterpoise of 

*s blasphemy, and concluded it with words 

b will resound throughout Christendom until 

the last coming of Christ, •• If the life and death of 

rates be those of a saint, the life and death 

of Jesus Christ are those of a God." 

Even Napoleon I. — the embodiment of milita- 
m, the eld Roman back again in the Christian 
centuries, meditating on men and things in the 
lonely isle of St. Helena — cannot keep his mind 
off this man and His history. The fallen con- 
queror asks one of the few companions of his 
ivity if he could tell him what Jesus Christ 
really was. The soldier begged to be excused. 
i busy in the world to think about 
that question. "What! you have been bapti 
in the Catholic church and cannot tell me what 
it was? Well, then, I will tell you." 
Then the man oi Austerlitz and Jena began speak- 



162 THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHRIST. 

ing of the great generals and emperors and 
conquerors of the world and ended with these 
words, •• In tine. I know men. and I say that Jesus 
Christ was not a man." And so Goethe, the great 
literary dandy among men of genius, conf. 
Christ's pre-eminence when he says, "the moral 
majesty, the spiritual culture in the gospels can 
never be excelled." And so Schiller when he 
names the religion of Jesus "the Incarnation of 
the Holy : " and even Strauss acknowledges His 
pre-eminence when he praises Him as the "su- 
preme religious genius of time:" and Penan too, 
diseasedly self-conscious as he ever is, confc 
that He merits Divine rank. And so in all things, 
and from all sorts of men. St. Paul's words have 
been and are being fulfilled, "that in all things 
He might have the pre-eminence/' Has He it in 
our hearts? Then to us belongs the joy thar 
Paul felt when he uttered the words — •* who hath 
delivered us out of the power of darkness and 
translated us into the Kingdom of the Son of 
His Love/ 



xn. 

OUR RELATIONSHIPS. 



" At the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of 
man — Genesis, ix: 5. 

THE subject of the Inspiration of the Old 
Testament Scriptures has often been in 
debate. Such debate every generation of men 
has to take part in. It is natural for us to accept 
the teachings of those who are in parentage to us, 
natural and right. So long as we are children we 
are under tutors and governors. These tutors 
and governors have to do their duty by us accord- 
ing to the best light they have. But the inevitable 
period of self-assertion comes. "\Vc arrive at the 
time when we have a right to our own individu- 
ality. The mind is conscious of itself. The 
generation ahead of us has to endure oftentimes 
a disagreeable amount of self-assertion. Exam- 
ine into things for ourselves we must. It is an 
anxious time for those who have had the responsi- 
bility for us. Our inclination towards scepticism 
or faith will depend now upon the moral forces at 



164 UB BEL A TIONSHIPS. 

the back of us and in us. Our opinions will be 
colored by our sympathies. If there be in us a 
natural goodness this period of debate is not dan- 
gerous. Of many a young man you hear it said 
by those who know him best, "oh, never fear, 
he'll come out right." Of others, "I'm not so 
sure about him," with a significant shake of the 
head. There is another kind of young man con- 
cerning whom not even so favorable a view as 
that is expressed. It is at this period of life that 
such questions as that of the inspiration of the 
Scriptures come up. And generally external evi- 
dence is thought to be that which is necessary to 
prove it. And so there is a great marshalling 
of facts and evidences which establish the probabil- 
ity. At this age the eye is not wide open to the 
internal evidence. It is not perceived that that is 
the strongest, and that without it all external evi- 
dence is well nigh useless. When you see outside 
the walls of a building a number of props to keep 
those walls from falling, there needs no other 
evidence of a bad foundation or w 7 retchedly poor 
building. External evidence is often like prop- 
ping up an ill-constructed and dishonestly built 
house. It is like asking a young student to sup- 
ply you with proof that Agassiz was a great 
naturalist or that Descartes was a great philoso- 
pher. Agassiz and Descartes must supply the 
evidence themselves ; no one else can do it. And 



Ull EEL A TIONSEIPS. 165 

so it is always. You cannot prove by any exter- 
nal evidence that Beethoven was a great composer, 
or Homer a great poet. These men must supply 
the evidence themselves. And so you cannot 
prove the inspiration of the Scriptures by any ex- 
ternal process simply. Nor can you by any 
process to the mind not itself capable of receiving 
high inspirations. This is forgotten, that the 
mind of the individual must be itself capable of 
receiving inspiration from that in which inspira- 
tion dwells, or all attempts at proof are necessarily 
defective. 

A blind man can receive no impulse from the 
verdure of nature, the blush of the rose, the deli- 
cacy of the lily, or the blue of the sky. A deaf 
man is not soothed when the music of " Oh, rest 
in the Lord, wait patiently for Him," falls upon 
the ear. It finds no entrance to his soul. The 
"Hallelujah Chorus" wakes no triumph in his 
heart. And so it is in relation to the inspiration 
of Scripture. If it cannot inspire me, move me, 
rouse something in me into response, you cannot 
prove to me its inspiration. Now when I find a 
declaration like this at the very threshold of the 
history of man's life " At the hand of every man's 
brother will I require the life of man," I feel the 
inspiration. How did this cosmopolitan truth get 
there? If it sprung up out of the soil of man's 
nature, then man was in an exceedingly advanced 



166 OUR RE LA TIONSHIPS. 

spiritual condition. Why? vre are not up to it 
now. It is ahead of all but the most spiritually 
minded Christians. No other people are abreast 
of it. It is Pauline in its character. It would 
net surprise us to find it among the words of St. 
John in the ripeness of his old age. But to meet 
it in the early chapters of the Book of Genesis, — 
it creates something of the feeling which arose 
in the heart of a friend of mine who in the huts of 
a tribe of Maoris in New Zealand came upon a face 
like to some of the most beautiful he had seen in 
his native Scotland, and addressing her found that 
she was Scotch, but how she had got there he 
could not discover. And here we find a Christian 
truth of the most advanced kind in the opening of 
the book of Genesis : a truth which inspires every 
inspirable Christian heart, and so proves its own 
inspiration. " At the hand of every man's 
brother will I require the life of man." 

The terms of the passage are too general to 
make any narrowing of them down within family 
limits legitimate. They contain the very advanced 
truth that every man belongs to every other man ; 
that there is but one great human family ; and that 
our action is not according to the will of God 
when it is conducted on lines of exclusion. 
Whether we see it or not the fact is everywhere 
assumed in Scripture, that that which is good for 
the whole humanity is good for each member of it. 



UR RE LA T10XSE1PS. 167 

Our policy is to be broadly sympathetic. In 
church, in state, religiously, politically, every- 
where. The charge is put upon us to preserve 
human life, not simply our own individual life, 
but to do all we can to preserve human life 
everywhere. And this is every man's duty. I 
beseech you to notice how singularly inclusive as 
well as how unlimited the terms of this passage 
are : — " At the hand of every mams brother will 
I require the life of man — " I know not how 
words could be better ordered so as to prevent 
any of us finding a way of escape from their 
inclusiveness. 

" The life of man," what is it ? The true human 
life, what is it? That which is fitting and proper 
to you and me and all men, what is it? Because 
that is the life we have to preserve. We are not 
allowed to live in the front of great human prob- 
lems we never so much as touch with the tip of 
our finger. Almighty God will not have that. It 
is contrary to His idea of man and His responsi- 
bility. Whatever occurs in a community or 
nation we have some sort of relation to it; we 
have an interest in it. There was one sublime 
moment in the history of the Roman people when 
one of their orators lifted the whole crowd to a 
higher plane than common as he exclaimed, k% I am 
a man, nothing that is human is foreign to me. M 
Overstepping all individual interests and all selfish 



168 TJB BEL A TIONSUIPS. 

feeling, leaping all bounds of place and time, lie 
embodied in that one sentence the noblest aspira- 
tion that had ever moved in the heart of the 
noblest Roman citizen. 

But how many, how very many, even now, in 
these Christian times, live on a very much lower 
plane than that ! How often do we find ourselves 
saying, "It's no concern of mine whether people 
are this, that, and the other ; if only I can be let 
alone to do my own business and enjoy my own 
life, that is all I ask." But that is not all that 
God asks ; it is not all of which our nature is 
capable ; and every man is accountable to God for 
the capability within him. We live in a world 
indefinitely improveable. In a right condition of 
society we live in a world capable of supporting 
an almost countless population. Man is here, even 
according to his natural endowments, to dress it 
and to keep it. Society is capable of being very 
different from what it is. And God has put 
upon each generation the responsibility of moving 
this world towards a completeness never yet at- 
tained, towards an order never yet reached, 
towards a sympathetic co-operativeness of man 
with man never yet approached. 

Now, in this movement the Christian Church 
has a very important place to fill, and for this 
simple reason that it is the Trustee of the truth 
which is to leaven the mass of human opinion and 



UB BEL A TIOXSEIPS. 169 

feeling. If some one else is in possession of more 
advanced truth, let them give it us. TTe have a 
right to it. TTe need it. It has not yet appeared 
that anyone has. Much talk -has been of recent 
years as to the wonderful change which is to pass 
over the lot of men generally by the discoveries 
of Science. And it would be a very foolish atti- 
tude for Christian men to take, — that of depre- 
ciating anything which Science can do to improve 
the lot of men. But Science is occupied simply 
with material forces. It does not pretend to step 
beyond them, although it has to do it, but then it 
is not strictly scientific. Supposing that every- 
thing which the most enthusiastic scientific 
optimists predict should come to pass ; supposing 
that our material life should have everything 
provided to make it comfortable — what does it 
amount to ? The telegraph brings us into closer 
neighborhood to men at a distance. The telephone 
has a similar use. The steam-engine transports 
us at a quicker rate from here to elsewhere. The 
steam-ship ploughs the main in saucy independ- 
ence of the winds without whose favor sailing 
ships can make no progress. There is more of 
movement, more knowledge, more stir, more 
expenditure of nervous energy. The people who 
have nothing to do in the world (so far as 
they have made discovery) can move about the 
surface of this broad earth more rapidly under the 



170 UR EEL A TIONSEIPS. 

delusion that they are really doing something. 
Facilities for travel have promoted the vagabond 
spirit and made it a little more respectable. 

The merchant finds his customers in China and 
Japan as well as at his own doors. And has to ; 
for our very material progress, this very inven- 
tiveness for which we are noted, is multiplying 
our difficulties. The Secretary of the Treasury 
of the United States has just told us in his report 
that our manufactures can thrive no longer by 
simply supplying the home market. "We can 
produce much more and much faster than we can 
consume : the existing iron, woolen, and cotton 
mills would meet in six months, perhaps in a 
shorter time, all our home demands." Our fields 
grow more wheat, and produce more corn, than we 
can sell ; our factories make more clothes than 
we can wear ; our cattle yield more meat than we 
can eat. And yet we are not content, far from it, 
our discontent grows with our abundance. YTe 
are verifying on a large scale the truth of the 
words that ' ' a man's life does not consist in the 
abundance of the things which he possesses." \Te 
need something else than material prosperity, to 
make material prosperity a blessing. 

It becomes us to make a calm estimate of what 
science can do for us ; to note its limitations, and 
how soon we reach them. It may give us houses 
in which we can £ret ventilation without draughts, 



UU RE LA TIONSIIIPS. 1 71 

a temperature that is comfortable without being 
enfeebling ; it may attend properly to all sanitary 
matters ; it may even keep us from being made 
universally dyspeptic by wholesale adulteration of 
that which we eat and drink, though that seems 
very far off. For, in regard to obtaining these 
things on which our physical health depends, 
perfectly free from everything that is deleterious, 
we are almost under the necessity of doing as he 
was advised to do who asked a Portugese wine 
grower how he was to obtain in his cellars in 
England a cask of pure Port wine. Said the man, 
"I would advise you to come here and see the 
grapes grow ; and watch them in every stage until 
their juice is in the cask: then to keep your eye 
on that identical cask marked with your own mark, 
and never for a moment allow it out of your sight 
until you deposit it in your cellar. I know no 
other way than that." So much of our misery 
comes from physical causes that in speaking of 
the "life of man" it is necessary to recognize 
them, and our own relation to the causes of much 
of the misery of this human race. No man but 
he who is blind in perception and judgment can 
close his eyes to the fact that so very many of our 
miseries come from causes over which Ave have 
control, and it is our duty, as servants of God and 
as being charged with the responsibility referred 
to in the text, to remove them if we can. Let us 



172 UB BEL A TIONSUIPS. 

welcome all that science can do for us, hut let us 
rememher that its limits are soon reached, and 
this also, that neither science nor anything else is 
of any use to those who are too ignorant or too 
indolent to use it. There are men within one 
hundred miles of this place who have built into 
their houses everything which the latest knowledge 
supplies ; who can command the most scientific 
physicians in the land, who can have everything 
that money can buy, and yet there is many a 
laboring man earning his few dollars a week who 
is both healthier and happier than they are. It is 
little better than sheer nonsense to talk of science 
supplying everything that our life needs to make 
it comfortable. No life ever yields comfort to its 
possessor, until it is conformed to the idea which 
He had for it who originally gave it. Everything 
has its state of fixity and there is no content and 
no satisfaction until that state is reached. This is 
specially and emphatically true of the life of man. 
We are members of a great human race in every 
one of whom there is the feeling of something 
attainable which has not yet been attained. As 
to what the something is there is endless diversity 
of opinion. But when the Apostle says, "The 
whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in 
pain until now," he recognizes the inward life of 
man seeking after something not yet reached. 
And this is not true alone of the ungodty, it is 



UB BE LA TIOXSHIPS. 1 73 

true also of the godly, "And not only they but 
we ourselves also who have received the first fruits 
of the Spirit even we ourselves groan within 
ourselves, waiting for the adoption." And yet, 
in another place, speaking of himself alone, he 
says, 4i Not as though I had already attained, 
either were already perfect, but I follow after if 
that I may apprehend that for which I am appre- 
hended of Christ Jesus." The Biblical view of 
life is very much higher than the man of the 
world's view, or the moral view, or the scientific 
view. Says Froude, speaking of Carlyle — these 
lines were often on his lips to the end of his life : 

"It is an old belief 

That on some solemn shore, 
Beyond the sphere of grief, 

Dear friends shall meet once more: 

Beyond the sphere of time, 

And sin and fate's control, 
Serene in changeless prime 

Of body and of soul 

That creed I fain would keep, 

This hope Til not forego; 
Eternal be the sleep 

If not to waken so." 

Xow the church has something more to do than 
to take care of itself. Very little good can it do 
on the principle of simply caring for itself. It 
has to sound in the ear of humanity, of men every- 



174 UB BEL A TIONSHIPS. 

where, the truth that is in these words, "At the 
hand of every man's brother w T ill I require the 
life of man." It has to illustrate by its spirit and 
temper and by its deeds this fact — that all men 
belong to all other men. Missionary it must be 
or die. When Israel of old, elected to a high 
service to the world, fell below the level of its 
calling — then said the Apostle, and he but spake 
the mind of God, "Lo ! we turn to the Gentiles." 
The doctrine of election, about which there has 
been so much needless wrangle, does not refer to 
personal salvation. It has nothing to do with 
that. It refers to a service, to a purpose, to a 
mission. The people of Israel were elected to 
a special dignity and mission to the whole world. 
They fell below it. They did not "make their 
calling and election sure ;" then the mission was 
put into other hands. And every nation has had 
some special mission to the world. When it has 
fallen below it, then its period of decay has begun 
and it has hurried to its doom. It is so of the 
church of Christ. That church has to declare 
God's ideas, God's favor, God's will to the world 
as these have come to us in Jesus. It has to live 
those ideas before the world and thus gradually 
but surely renew the world. It is to be the leaven 
in the meal. It must be that every man is 
accountable for the right use of the noblest ideas 
which ever came into his soul. Quench them he 



UB BE LA TIOXSHIPS. 1 75 

must not. Stifle them he must not. He must 
nourish them into growth, or his soul will be a 
graveyard in which are buried the murdered inno- 
cents which would have grown into manhood hut 
for the strangling hand of his scepticism. And 
so, while I speak of the Church as the collective 
of all God-inspired souls, I beseech you to note 
that in our text there is no absorption of the indi- 
vidual into the mass. "At the hand of every 
man's brother will I require the life of man." 
The whole life of man concerns each of us — all of 
us. That is the truth at the base of universal 
suffrage. We are responsible for the high or low 
tone of the life of man in the community in which 
we live, in the town, in the city, in the state, in 
the nation. "At the hand of every man's brother 
will I require the life of man." Why, says one, 
should I be punished for what another man does? 
Because we are all partakers of one life, and are 
related, and are a family, and the law is that if 
one member suffer all the members shall suffer 
with it. And so, if there be small-pox in the poor 
streets, you who live in the better streets begin to 
be concerned, you don't ask what have I to do 
with that man's small-pox? You say to the 
authorities, "Get the man off to the hospital; 
disinfect his house. Go in and do it." But what 
right have you to enter that man's house and haul 
him away to the hospital? What right have you 



176 OUR BEL A TI0XSUIP8. 

to send the health officer with his disinfectant ? 
You see, your doctrine of individualism breaks 
down in presence of a contagious and desolating 
disease, and very properly so. But is it not a 
miserable confession to make, that we have to 
learn the doctrine of our relationship to others 
on the lowest side of it, because we will not recog- 
nize it on its highest side? Now, while we really 
do more as churches than is done by the un- 
churched in the community in regard to the men 
and women who are, through ignorance and 
shiftlessness, at a great disadvantage, yet as 
churches, we are apt to separate between the ma- 
terial and the spiritual and to say, "Our work is 
spiritual not material." But how can you separate 
these ? You never saw a man's body walking on 
one side of the street while his spirit was walking 
on the other side. Soul and body are so closely 
married in this life that no one can divorce them. 
They act and react on each other. Organization 
does not produce life ; — life produces organiza- 
tion. AYe cannot separate the material and the 
spiritual. The life of man is too much of a unit 
to allow us to do that. And, says the Almighty 
One, "At the hand of every man's brother will I 
require the life of man." TTe are parts of a na- 
tion's life. All its questions are our questions. 
All its struggles are our struggles. All its fail- 
ures are our failures, all its triumphs are our 



UR EEL A T10X SHIPS. 177 

triumphs. Not till the regenerated brotherhood 
of the Church rises above its sectisnis and boldly 
puts itself in the fore-front of the nation's life as 
the truthteller, the Evana'elizer, claiming the life 
of man for Christ and testing everything by the 
principles of life He has given us, does it do its 
duty or fulfill its mission. Of course, a man 
begins with his individual wants, but the man who 
takes no interest in any one but himself, and even 
when he is voting his vote on a great national 
occasion is still voting for self, regardless of the 
great life of man, is a man not affiliated to the 
cause of Christ in the world and his end is defeat. 
But "our Father hears the man who cries to 
Him, however clumsily, for light and strength 
to do his duty. He may be utterly puzzled, utter- 
ly downhearted ; utterly hopeless ; but in acting on 
the higher plane introduced to us in this text, he 
is baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire. 
God meets his willingness and endows him with 
power. He begins to have a right judgment : to 
see clearly w T hat he ought to do, and how to do it. 
He grows more clear-sighted, more prompt, more 
steady than he has ever been before. And there 
comes a fire into his heart such as he never had 
before, a spirit and a determination which nothing 
can daunt or break, which makes him bold, cheer- 
ful, earnest in the face of the anxiety and danger 
which would, at any other time, have broken his 



178 UR BEL A TIONSHIPS. 

heart. The man is lifted up above his former 
self, and carried on through his work, he hardly 
knows how, till he succeeds nobly, or if he fails, 
fails nobly." 

But the inspiration of the Spirit of God, meet- 
ing His willingness, makes him to see and feel that 
he is allied to the life of man. And he acts from 
a higher view and on a broader plane of things 
than before. He hardly knows himself again. 
Seeing farther, feeling more deeply, life enlarges 
to his vision, and you hear him hymning this 
glorious petition : — 

" Father, bear the prayer we offer, 
Not for ease that prayer shall be, 

But for strength, that we may ever 
Live our lives courageously." 

To save life, not to destroy it, is thenceforth 
his aim, and whatever the line he take, whatever 
the work he do, according to his possessions, his 
opportunity, his talent, he realizes a blessedness 
unknown before, and to such an one there is no 
harrassinp; rebuke ever tormenting his soul even 
ill words like these, " At the hand of every man's 
brother will I require the life of man." 



xni. 

THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 



But I say unto you, my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill 
the body, and after that, have no more that they can do. — Luke, 
xii : 4. 

IX those times when the air is full of war and 
rumors of war, " distress of nations with 
perplexity, — the sea and the waves roaring, men's 
hearts failing them for fear," — in such times men 
have to seek out some truth which shall help to 
steady the mind and keep it hopeful. For no 
man but he who is heartless can keep himself from 
shuddering at the idea of warfare, wholesale 
carnage, men mown down by hundreds and thou- 
sands, wives turned into widows, children made 
fatherless, mothers left to mourn their only sons, 
the tender humanities of life ruthlessly trodden 
under foot, the hard earned money of the people 
compulsorily exacted from them and spent for the 
direst purposes man knows, in doing devil's work, 
not the work of God. All this is terrible to look 
at and think of. How should we view it if we 

179 



180 THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 

were introduced to it for the first time ? If the 
history of man had not been one of warfare, if 
now the idea and the purpose of it were suddenly 
sprung upon us, what a howl of indignation there 
would be from one end of the world to the other 
against any one of any nationality who should 
propose to use Intellect and Science in preparing 
means and methods for man's destruction ! In our 
unimpassioned moments we are all, surely, on 
the side of unwarlike statesmen, men who on 
their shoulders have the heaviest kind of respon- 
sibility, men who will do anything and every- 
thing that can be done rather than draw the 
sword. Such men have oftentimes to hear them- 
selves charged with vacillation, cowardice, want 
of heroism, and I know not what else, but if you 
or I were in the place of such a man should we not 
do everything doable to make war impossible, 
and if we failed, to make it on behalf of those who 
were responsible for the failure criminal. In our 
day there are so many commercial interests which 
make a pecuniary profit out of war. These are 
clamorous all the time. Men who deal in money 
on stock-exchanges are clamorous too. And the 
newspapers, through which we get our information, 
have a pecuniary interest in war. These clamor- 
ous interests make it extremely difficult for 
statesmen, who are at heart peace-makers, to get 
a fair hearing or fair-play. 



THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 181 

One of the blessings for which we cannot be too 
grateful, is that this continent from the Atlantic 
to the Pacific is not to be split up into rival 
nationalities, jealous of each others' power and 
progress, preyed upon by treacherous diplomats 
in league with professional soldiers who can get 
promotion only through war. The division 
between North and South would have been the 
open gateway to the introduction of all the old 
world evils to this continent. The perpetuation 
of the Union meant very much more than the 
perpetuation of the American idea, it meant the 
exclusion of the Italian and Spanish Machiavellian 
idea, the exclusion of the German imperial idea, 
the exclusion of the Russian autocratic idea, that 
the country is to be sacrificed to the interests of 
the Czar, the exclusion of the English aristocratic 
idea that God made the many for the sake of the 
few, all these ideas would have got footing and 
power and permanency here if the South had been 
allowed to assert and establish its independence. 
JVow y the whole force of the national mind can be 
turned toward internal improvements, to the condi- 
tion of the people generally and how to elevate it. 
The professional soldier becomes only a superior 
kind of policeman, the defender of personal 
liberty not the assailant of any one, as such to be 
respected and honored. We ask, however, will 
the time never come when the professional soldier 



182 THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 

shall be the soldier of Conscience and of Civiliza- 
tion and thus the embodiment of the Old Chivalry? 
Will he never be the man who prevents instead 
of foments war? "Will the time never come when 
Christianity shall have conquered the militaryism 
of the civilized nations of the world, and when 
there shall among those nations be a holy league 
and covenant to prevent war? When a dog 
becomes mad everybody in the region is interested 
in preventing his biting men, women and children. 
And when a nation is suddenly seized with the 
war frenzy, all other nations should combine 
against it. There is no other way to make war 
the disgraceful and hateful thing it is. Despots, 
using huge armies for the avenging their own 
private quarrels with other despots, or for the 
promoting their own insatiable ambition, or for 
the creating 1 interests outside the nation for the 
sake of calling off attention from the deplorable 
condition of things inside, these men should 
be given to understand that they have had their 
day, and for humanity's sake, must cease to be. 

The New Testament is remarkable for its brief 
recognition of all the facts of life and its sugges- 
tions as brief, and effective, of thoughts which 
should bring some degree of comfort even in the 
presence of the direst difficulties and the most 
doleful degradations. While we cannot undertake 
to give anything that could be called an exhaus- 



THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 183 

tive interpretation of this text to which our 
attention is called, yet it introduces to us certain 
ideas which may, in times of trouble, be of some 
help and comfort to us. 

The first of these ideas is this — that there is a 
limit to the power of evil. "Fear not them 
which kill the body, and after that have no more 
that they can do." It would appear to us in those 
moments in which we are most sympathetic, that 
there is nothing more diabolical than war. It has 
been characterized as the sum of all human vil- 
lainies. Any form of government which makes 
war easy is condemned as in itself evil. No other 
word need be said. No apology for it ought for a 
moment to be listened to. Abolish it ; for hu- 
manity's sake, abolish it. That form of govern- 
ment which in the nature of the case is most 
pacific, is the form which a God of Love must 
mean to exist. But even war is not the worst of 
evils. It would be better for men to go to war 
believing that they were doing something thereby 
for God and His Kingdom, than to have perpetual 
peace with no belief in God at all, just as it is 
belter for a man to die in doing something that 
calls out the fulness of his life than for his powers 
to rot in indolence. That which Divine Provi- 
dence permits here on this earth, is a part of the 
condition of human freedom. It is part of 
the discipline of life. But there is a limit even to 



184 THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 

the worst things that a man can do. When he 
murders me he comes to the limit of his ability. 
He releases my soul from its fetters, he unbinds 
me from this earth, he hurries me into the spirit- 
ual world. It is an immense thing to do for me ; 
it may be, as far as I am personally concerned, a 
great blessing conferred ; as far as the doer of the 
deed is concerned it must be the weightiest curse, 
for he has done his worst on me. 

The Christian view of death does not make 
murder any the less of a crime, it does nothing to 
justify war, but it does a great deal to relieve our 
minds when we think upon Divine Providence. 
What meditative mind is there that has not been 
on the edge of disbelief in a Divine Providence in 
times of dire calamity, when human life seemed so 
cheap as almost to be worthless, blood poured out 
like w T ater, and for what? To gratify human 
ambition, to avenge some fancied injury or slight, 
even to help depopulate a country because of 
angry growlings arising from internal discontent. 
Nine-tenths of the wars of the world have been 
criminal. They have* been wars which have left 
nations sadder, poorer, more demoralized, than 
when they began. They have left behind them 
no stable government, no freed slaves, no possibil- 
ities of improvement, nothing of any value. And 
when we think of such wars and the men who are 
responsible for them, we can hardly refrain from 



TEE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 185 

thanking God for the words, "After death the 
judgment." Xo moral order could eternally exist 
in a universe in which such monstrosities and such 
monsters were not punished. And yet, looking 
all the facts of life full in the face, sympathizing 
as none other ever did with the myriads of torn 
and bleeding hearts which war has rent and 
broken, our Lord could say to us, "Fear not 
them which kill the body and after that have no 
more that they can do." He could say so because 
He knew the beyond. He saw the limit to 
evil. He saw the line beyond which it could not 
go. He was in the secret of the councils of the 
Almighty One who had said, "Thus far shalt thou 
go and no farther." It was not heartlessness 
which spoke. This is not the language of a soul 
devoid of sympathy, not the language of one capa- 
ble of saying, "Let them go on with their wars, 
it will make it better for trade." Oh, no ; nothing 
of this, it was the language of one who could 
march straight up to Calvary, who, hanging there, 
refused the anodyne that would have lulled His 
physical pain, because lie saw clearly the beyond, 
and so, for the joy that was set before Him, 
endured the cross, despising the shame. Have we 
not a right to all the help His words give us? 
Nay; do not those who refuse this help, defraud 
themselves? It is impossible in the present de- 
veloped state of the human mind, to believe in a 



186 THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 

Divine providence apart from the revelation of 
Immortality. I think that I am justified in saying 
it is impossible to believe in it apart from the 
revelation of a judgment beyond the line we call 
death. One of the great intellectual arguments 
for the truth of the Christian doctrines is their 
coherence, the way in which they form a whole, 
the way in which one necessitates the other. The 
same Holy Spirit which convinces the mind of 
Sin, convinces it of a Eighteousness which is 
absolute and of a Judgment which cannot be evaded 
or avoided. The three ideas cohere ; they tenant 
the mind together. They belong to one another. 
In this state of existence man cannot develop 
without freedom, without a measure of freedom 
which seems to us dangerous, even, at times, 
appalling. The fact that a man should have the 
liberty and the power to kill his fellow man seems 
to us, when we are meditative, dreadful. The 
fact that it should be possible for men to organize 
armies for the express purpose of wholesale 
slaughter of each other seems more dreadful still. 
The attendant fact that men should be so capable 
of deluding themselves as to assume that on this 
field of slaughter, virtue and heroism can be most 
appropriately and conspicuously shown, is astound- 
ing. And yet there is no denial of the facts. Our 
Lord knew them as well as we know them ; saw 
the battle-fields bristling with bayonets ; the smoke 



THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 187 

of their artillery ; the reel of their carnage ; heard 
the groans of dying men, and the moans of dying 
horses, heard it all, saw it all, shuddered at it all, 
and yet He could calmly say to us, "Fear not 
them which kill the bod}', and after that have no 
more that they can do." There is a limit to the 
power of evil. It is not almighty. It is not infi- 
nite. It has its sphere, and within that sphere can 
do its dire work. Murderers may murder the 
body ; the aggressive military spirit may take up 
its abode in nations and get itself legalized and be 
made honorable even, but it is not of God. It 
may " kill the body, and after that it has no more 
that it can do." 

The second idea, a still profounder idea, is this, 
that death is a rescue from all evils which are not 
demoniac in their character. It seems to me quite 
impossible to read the New Testament with that 
attention which it demands and deserves, and fail 
to notice that there are two kinds of evil spoken 
of, that which belongs to man as possessing an 
animal nature and that which does not belong to 
him as of his own humanity, but which enters into 
him and takes possession of him, that which we 
call Satanic. It does not seem to me possible to 
read the New Testament references to evil intelli- 
gently, unless we keep this distinction in mind. 
The Church of Rome has tried to preserve the 
distinction in the well-known words " mortal and 



188 THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 

venial sins." It does not seem to me that the 
terms are well chosen. Bat the fact that such a 
distinction in the quality of sins has been made, is 
instructive and noteworthy. Protestantism has 
often spoken of sins of infirmity, and sins of will. 
In the one case a man errs not meaning to err, he 
sins not meaning to rebel against God. The roots 
of his sin are in his ignorance, in his non-percep- 
tion of the nature of certain acts. Some sins are 
fallen virtues. But other sins have no affinity 
with virtues. They are of such a nature as to 
take possession of the inner spirit and dry up the 
very springs of repentance. In such a case a 
man's heart never melts into sorrow and his lips 
never utter the word of contrition. Our humanity 
when it is Christianized readily recognizes that 
some sinners are more to be pitied than blamed. 
Now, from all sins of this class and from the evils 
they bring, death will come as a rescue. That 
part of the man in which the inherited tendencies to 
these sins reside will drop away. The soul enters 
into new surroundings and conditions. That 
which injures and tends to kill the body may still 
leave the soul, if not unstained, yet not separated 
from God. The man who has never meant to be 
a God-clefier and hater, who has never meant to 
injure his neighbor, must be of a different quality, 
whatever his natural infirmities, from the man 
who has been both a God-defier and a man-hater. 



THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 189 

Those who fear not God, nor regard man, are in a 
condition far more hopeless than many whose sins 
are more outspoken in their character. Search 
into our Lord's life, notice how He speaks as he 
comes into contact with different types of sinners, 
how pitiful he is towards one class, how full of 
insuppressible indignation in the presence of 
others, a holy defiance trembles in His tones — what 
is the meaning of this destinction ? In the one 
case he meets sin which is almost all infirmity, in 
the other case sin, calling itself virtue, whose core 
is unrcpenting malignity. In the one case he is 
the physician to human helplessness, in the other 
case he confronts that kingdom whose darkness 
enters into the very spirit of man destroying faith 
and hope. In the one case he touches the sin 
which belongs to fallen humanity, in the other he 
finds men in league with the Evil One, acting like 
children of the devil, and he came to destroy the 
works of the devil and to give man his deliverance 
from the devil power. I think we are justified in 
the inference that death indicates the time of 
deliverance from all evils which are not Satanic in 
their quality. tk Fear not them which kill the body, 
and after that have no more that they can do." 

The third idea is — that of a more dreadful 
enemy than those who kill the body. We are, in 
this world, occupied chiefly with evils which 
report themselves in the body. Not everyone 



190 THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 

recognizes that there may be evils more dire and 
dreadful than these, whose seat is the soul, deliv- 
erance from which would not come with rescue 
from the conditions which bind us while we are in 
this material bod\^. There is a Personal Power, 
says our Lord, which prompts the murderers of the 
body to do their dire work. That is the dreadful en- 
emy ; you cannot regard that enemy with too much 
dread and horror. It is a power which delights 
in condemnation and destruction. Its sphere of 
operation is not confined to this world. It has 
access here through the worst men and women 
who are in the w T orld. They are the gateway 
through which it enters. I know how we all 
shrink from looking into this region. It is a dark 
and doleful realm. We seem helpless when called 
upon to fight an enemy who works in the dark. 
Even murder has its decrees and assassination is 
the meanest form of murder. An enenry who 
gives you no chance of flight or defence is the 
lowest specimen of an enemy. Now, when social 
reformers plead with men to forsake their vices, 
they almost invariably point to results which are 
of the earth, earthy. They say to the chronic 
drunkard, look at the social disgrace which you 
bring upon yourself, the desolateness of your 
home, the poverty of your children, disease lurk- 
ing in your blood, and so on. All these are 
material results and possibly, in most cases, they 



THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 191 

are the only results which can be talked about. 
But there are subtler and worse results than 
these. Supposing the poverty and beggary should 
be avoided and the coarser material results 
should not press themselves upon the attention, is 
there nothing else in the home deplorable, nothing 
else in man still more deplorable ? Think of a 
woman of natural nobleness of soul, with delicate 
refinement of taste, and educated mind, whose 
chief pleasures would be in the mental and affec- 
tional regions, bound hand and foot to a man who 
is a chronic drunkard, and then conceive, if you 
can, of the unspoken misery of such a state. It 
is not the misery of wanting bread, or the misery 
of " looped and windowed raggedness," but a far 
deeper misery than that. Then think again of the 
meanness of soul which comes to the man himself, 
of the loss of all nobleness and all real refinement 
and consideration for others; these, the moral and 
spiritual results, are far worse than the material. 
We begin to touch that region which our Lord 
opens to us when the soul becomes the prey of a 
malignant power from which it cannot rescue 
itself. Not that this is by any means the only or 
chief gateway through which that malignant power 
access to the soul; I quote it only to show 
that there are worse evils than the material to 
which social reformers point. 

These I have named are the dire facts of life ; 



192 THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 

there is no fancy here ; no invention ; no specula- 
tion ; we are face to face with facts, enemies who 
kill the body, men of the slaughter-house, but 
after that have no more that they can do ; and 
revealed to us more fully by Jesus the Christ 
than it was ever revealed before, a power whose 
aim is to destroy both body and soul, a malignant 
power, the whole of whose nature and history we 
shall never know in this world. But notice now, 
I beg of you, what follows ; notice what is the 
next word which falls from our Lord's lips. He 
anticipates the dismay which will come to human 
hearts as he utters these words about the men 
who kill the body and the morq malignant power 
which aims to destroy the soul. He sees the 
hopeless look. He hears the groan of the 
sympathetic heart. He notes the question shaping 
itself into form. Alas, what is a man to do in 
such a world and in presence of such powers of 
evil ? And so, immediately, with a haste that seems 
like an abrupt transition from one subject to 
another, He asks, "Are not five sparrows sold for 
two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten in 
the sight of God. But the very hairs of your 
head are all numbered. Fear not, ye are of more 
value than many sparrows." He meets all the 
fear and apprehension of the soul in presence 
of these appalling facts by a declaration of the 
minuteness and universality of the Divine Provi- 



THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIL. 193 

dence. TThere is the protection from this malig- 
nant power of evil? 

Utter, absolute trust in God — that is the refuge 
from the evil and destroying spirit. In the 
presence of great destructive forces you feel your 
own insignificance. But you are not more insig- 
nificant than the birds, are you? God cares for 
them. You cannot deliver yourself from these 
destructive powers, but God can deliver you from 
them. That is the connection between one thought 
and the other. The Providence of God is so 
deep, so broad, that it can allow to men and 
devils a freedom which seems appalling, and yet 
it can put up insurmountable barriers beyond 
which these evil powers cannot go. That is our 
Lord's teaching. And it is teaching that every 
mind needs, specially minds that are imagina- 
tive, brooding, thoughtful, contemplative, otherwise 
these minds will relapse into darkness, into 
unbelief, into godlessness. Poor Cowper (the 
poet) mused and mused and mused till he went 
mad, but he recovered himself and wrote : — 

God moves in a mysterious way 

J I is wonders to perform; 
He plants his footsteps in the deep 

And rides upon the storm. 

Blind Unbelief is sure to err, 

And scan his work in vain; 
God is His own interpreter, 

And lie will make it plain. 



XIV. 
FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE. 



I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven 
you for His name's sake. — I John, ii : 12. 

THIS language of St. John is somewhat hazy. 
A kind of mist hangs around it as around a 
landscape when the all but imperceptible golden 
veil of an Indian summer is thrown over it. Some 
land is naturally so rich that it throws up its veil 
of modest mist and then when the Sun permeates 
it, everywhere is a whisper of color, but it is color 
which reveals not conceals, like the color on the 
peach which reveals that it is luscious to the very 
centre. And so the mind of St. John throws off 
its own enriching atmosphere, simply because it is 
itself so rich and mellow through its easy permea- 
bleness. The human love of Jesus found a resting 
place in this disciple's heart, and in that fact is the 
secret of the sweet mysticism of the Apostle. 
Each heart throws off its own atmosphere, as each 
flower its own perfume. In the company of St. 
Paul men would feel able to do and to dare. In 

194 



FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE. 195 

that of St. John they would feel the deep need of 
fellowship, of being in loving sympathy with each 
other and with God. Inspiration did not change 
each of these men into the other, it used that 
which was best in each individual and thus brought 
all into sympathetic fellowship with the Christ 
of God. 

Living in the joy and light of the Divine Father- 
hood, the Apostle John had come to regard all dis- 
ciples of Jesus as children ; and as the beauty of a 
child is in its childhood, its littleness, its unassert- 
iveness, its dependableness, the Apostle seems to 
have a delight in speaking of the disciples of Jesus 
as little children, remembering doubtless the little 
child that Jesus took and set in the midst of those 
disciples who were wrangling about greatness and 
place and position. These three terms which he 
uses — fathers, young men, little children — are not 
picked up at random, but chosen de/iberately and 
with design — " fathers " for knowledge ; " young 
men " for strength ; " little children " because of 
their complete dependableness. AVe must bear 
this in mind or we shall perhaps be somewhat 
inclined to find fault with the Apostle when he 
ciates the idea of sinfulness with little children. 
Their small naughtinesses do not seem of sufficient 
gravity to be called sins. And yet, inherited 
sinfulness of disposition is at the root of most 
of them. But if we look carefully at the form of 



196 FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE. 

this passage it suggests to our minds not a lament 
over sins, but a congratulation on the fact of sins 
forgiven. " I write unto vou because your sins are 
forgiven you for His name's sake." The idea in 
the passage which attracts us is the association of 
sin with forgiveness, and specially the association 
of forgiveness with Jesus Christ. 

In this week on which we have entered and 
which is regarded by the sacerdotal churches as 
specially a holy week, it does not seem to me that 
there is anything to prevent the Evangelical 
Churches from approaching Easter day by the 
gateway of that sacrifice of Himself which our 
Lord made. Indeed, there seems to be a kind of 
incongruity about celebrating the Eesurrection 
unless we first of all dwell upon some of the facts 
and thoughts which made the Resurrection the 
great triumphant centre of all life. As we intend, 
on Sabbath next, to turn our thoughts to the 
Eesurrection of our Lord, would it not be as 
appropriate for us, as for those who belong to the 
sacerdotal churches, to make this week a time for 
meditation on the sacrificial work of our Lord and 
its relation to our deliverance from sin and its 
consequences ? 

He made a sacrifice of Himself, and so, in some 
real and true sense, His life and death must have 
been sacrificial. He sacrificed Himself in order 
that we might have our human life preserved to 



FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE. 197 

us, and so in some real and true sense His life and 
death must have been substitutionary. And as 
His death had relation to the forgiveness of our 
sins, in some real and true sense, it must have been 
expiatory. These three elements, the expiatory, 
the substitutionary, -the sacrificial must have 
entered into what our Lord was and did. Often- 
times, I know, these facts are stated in a very 
crude and inadequate way. But that is the fault 
of the statement not of the fact. There is a deep 
philosophy in the fact. TThen a citizen dons the 
garb of a soldier, and goes out to fight for his 
country, if he dies, he dies that some one else may 
not die, he sacrifices himself that some one else 
may live. He does not fight his own private 
battle. He is a representative. And so Jesus 
Christ was our representative, and sacrificed Him- 
self for us. Not that this illustration covers the 
ground. It only helps us to make a little pro- 
gress towards the place where we can see farther 
into this death of Jesus. But all our explanations 
leave much unexplained, for we cannot look into 
the deeps of sin or the deeps of life, or what is 
necessary in order to God being just and the justi- 
fier of Him who believes in Jesus. . 

I think however, that there is much of instruc- 
tion, and no little of comfort lor us if only we will 
try to sec things as the Apostle John sees them. 

lie acknowledges the dark fact of sin, the 



198 FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE. 

bright fact of forgiveness, and the brightest of all 
facts — that forgiveness is based on the relation 
which Jesus Christ has established between 
Himself and us. 

Believing that we do not make enough of this 
brightest of all bright facts, that forgiveness is 
based on the relation which Jesus the Christ has 
established between Himself and us, I would ask 
you specially to fix your attention on this. 

]S T ot that I mean to suggest that we make too 
much of the dark fact of sin. On the contrary 
we talk about it too much and think about it too 
little. If we had any deep apprehension of what 
sin is, we could never jest about it as we do so 
often. We should feel it to be the radical defect 
in our nature, so radical that nothing that we 
could do ourselves, if left to ourselves, could pre- 
vent its being fatal. That shallow theology which 
says "If only a man repent of his sin it is all 
right " would not find much favor from us. The 
sin of man is so radical that if left alone he never 
will repent of it ; for he will never see sin as sin. 
He will see it only as defect, — defect excusable 
on the ground that to err is human. In old times 
leprosy was the disease which stood for sin, for 
the reason that it was an incurable disease. 
Christ touched the leper to show men that what 
was incurable with man was curable with God. 
There was a world of suggestion in that touch of 



FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE. 199 

Christ. There is no possibility of man curing his 
own sin by his own repentance. Repentance is 
an effect not a cause. It is the effect of the Spirit 
of God entering a human spirit and starting a new 
life in it. 

I do not mean to offer any words that are 
saturated with reproachfulness, but in our most 
thoughtful moments I think we must, some of us, 
be surprised at the pitiful poverty of much which 
passes for thinking on some of these vital themes. 
One is weary of hearing of secular education as a 
cure for the radical sinfulness of man's nature. 
I am sure that an eloquent writer of our day is 
right on this — that if the influence of the outpoured 
life of Christ were withdrawn from our world, 
sins would not only increase incalculably in number, 
but the tyranny of sin would be fearfully aug- 
mented, and it would spread among a greater 
number of people. Falsehood would become so 
universal as almost to dissolve society ; and the 
homes of domestic life would be turned into the 
wards, either of a prison or a mad-house. TTe 
can not be in the company of an atrocious criminal 
without some feeling of uneasiness and fear. 
We should not like to be left alone with him, even 
if his chains are not unfastened. Withdraw the 
outpoured life of Christ from the world and why 
should not such men be the majority? Some one 
says, Educate, Educate ; Education (of the mind 



200 FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE. 

only apart from education of the heart) 
multiplies and magnifies our powers of sinning. 
That refinement adds a fresh malignity. Under 
the power of the education of the intellect only 
you but sharpen the claws of the lion and whet 
the fangs of the tiger. Under the power of 
secular education only men may become more and 
more diabolically and unmixedly bad, until at 
last earth would be a hell on this side of the grave. 
There would doubtless be new kinds of sin and 
worse kinds. Education would provide the 
novelty, and refinement w^ould carry it into the 
region of the unnatural. All highly refined and 
luxurious developments of heathenism have fear- 
fully illustrated this truth. A wild barbarian is 
like a beast. His savage passions are violent but 
intermittent, and his necessities of sin do not 
appear to grow. Their circle is limited. But a 
highly-educated sinner, without the restraints of 
religion, is like a demon. His sins are less confined 
to himself. They require others to be offered in 
sacrifice to them. 

If only we had read more carefully our histories, 
the history of Greece, refined linguistically and in 
regard to Art beyond anything accomplished 
since ; the history of Rome with its legal education, 
its military discipline, its aesthetic training in 
oratory and the art of poetry, so that even now 
Horace and Virgil stand all but peerless in their 



FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE. 201 

ranks, we should not too much exalt education so 
far as it means the sharpening of the intellect. Or, 
if we went to the Orient, is the Buddhist an uned- 
ucated man ? The subtlest-thoughted people in 
the world are in the Orient. If you doubt it, ask 
Emerson. He knew. And vet these educations 
produced a wide-spread despair. And what does 
that mean? Despair, it means always and every- 
where, "rage, madness, violence, tumult, blood- 
shed. " Verily we are saved by hope. But how 
to get the hope. Hope does not come to men 
who need it, simply by telling them it is a good 
thing and brings brightness into the soul. Flowers 
are good things and bring brightness into our 
gardens, but they never come except you can pour 
sunlight, and not frosty sunlight either, into the 
beds in which the seeds lie slumbering. Christ- 
ians ought to have reached an order of intelligence 
which would restrain them from ffiving their 
endorsement to that kind of thinking which seems 
to have something in it because it is so well- 
dressed. All the classics and mathematics in the 
world cannot touch the root of the evil which 
curses man. It is a new disposition, a new heart 
which man needs, and the outpoured life of God 
in Christ is necessary to produce that; as neces- 
sary to produce it as the outpoured radiance of 
the Sun i- necessary to produce the fruits of the 
earth by which our physical nature is sustained. 



202 FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE, 

Has not God given us in nature parables illustra- 
tive of the great facts of spiritual life ? At times 
God seems to be at a great distance from us, at so 
great a distance that we can live our life without 
taking Him and what He can do for us into the 
account. We even think that it is problematical 
whether He have any touch upon us or not. We 
seem to live from earth-born forces and within 
earth-born conditions. Ou^ht not such musings 
to be seen in their true nature when we think that 
we are really dependent upon light and heat 
generated ninety millions of miles from us, for 
every violet gathered by a child's hand in the early 
spring-time, for every blushing rose in June, even 
for every common potato which comes to our 
table. If it were not for that great furnace ninety 
millions of miles oft*, our globe would be an icicle 
glittering in the semi-darkened depths of space, a 
dimly visible gem on the sable bosom of night. 
There is nothing which lives on the life generated 
within itself. Man cut off from the outpoured 
radiance of the Divine Nature would be as the 
earth cut off from the Sun. The man who curses 
God, the man whose profanity declares the innate 
vulgarity of his mind, is obliged to inhale from 
God's reservoir of life the very breath with which 
to curse his Maker. In God's Universe the dis- 
tant and the near are in fellowship, and so, too, in 
God's spiritual realm, the Redemptive forces which 



FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE. 203 

often seem far off, are not really so. "I am with 
you alway, even to the end of the world/' was no 
mere figure of speech. As the sunlight enters 
into every flower that blooms and every fruit that 
ripens, so Christ's life enters into every soul 
that breathes the prayer, " God be merciful to me 
a sinner." Therefore it is that the Apostle John 
goes far deeper than to connect the forgiveness of 
sin with repentance for sin, he connects it with 
the relationship we sustain to Christ and the rela- 
tionship He sustains to us. And if only you will 
think of it, there is much more of consolation in 
this fact than in anything we can say about repent- 
ance. There is always room for doubt as to the 
reality and sincerity of our repentance. There is 
always room to doubt its genuineness, its suffi- 
ciency, its quality. Will such repentance as I can 
give ever satisfy the Divine Holiness? If it will 
not, what is the good of it? What use to torment 
myself about it? If I cannot be sure of anything 
I offer being the genuine and right thing, what 
comfort can I get out of anything I do? The 
human mind is sure to reason in this way. If a 
man builds his house on the sands and there is 
nothing beneath but sand, he will trembie when 
the tempest-driven tide thunders in. All our 
experiences, all our feelings, all our ideas of 
ourselves are poor, sandy foundations on which 
to build hopes for Eternity. So long as a man is 



204 FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE. 

playing with religion, almost anything that sounds 
religious will do for him ; but once let real 
thoughtfulness sieze him, once let him look into 
the depths of his own nature and see "what in- 
credible possibilities of wickedness we have in our 
souls," then nothing but the real thing will do. 
Henceforth his repentances, his experiences, his 
feelings, anything and everything belonging to 
him are regarded as poor foundations on which to 
build hopes. He asks — is there no reason out- 
side myself why God should forgive my sins ? All 
these changeful inner experiences are treacherous 
as a quicksand. I want something that is not 
treacherous, something that remains, something 
that man cannot take away from me, something he 
has not given me. It is this state of mind to 
which the Apostle John appeals when he says, "I 
write unto you little children because your sins 
are forgiven you for His name's sake." I do not 
for a single moment assume that I have the vision 
to look into the profundities of the Divine and 
Human natures so as to see to the depths of this 
theme. Some one asks — why is it necessary 
that Jesus the Christ of God should put Himself 
into the relations towards us which have been 
established, in order that the Everlasting Father 
may forgive sins? Why cannot He say to the 
sorrowing man "I forgive you," and have done 
with it? Well, it seems to me there are reasons 



FOB HIS NAME - SAKK 

in His owd nature; there are reasons in man's 

in the Divine Govern- 
ment. 

The. ■£. TThen 

:;dertakt- : e sin He pledges Himself 

to l a man from his sin. In a 

<^_ 

word. He undertakes to regenerate his nature, to 
ren- it bo that he shall eventually live the unsin- 
nin_ life. And in order to that, Jesus Christ 
and His work are necessary. 

a. To 

-inner and 1 im to the helpk 

which has come from his sin is only half forgive- 

Is to be brought into such an 

un ing : G 1 and into such a love of 

.1 that he will hate to sin against Him. In 

order to that, Christ Jesus and His sacrifice of 

Himself are nc Is will not do. 

There some Divine Act which will stand 

ana liable, and incapable of being paralleled. 

J sus tl Christ 1. is supplied that act. 

l" \ ent, 

time to state them beyond saying 

th; :it that then ie 

no righteous n for rebellion against God on 

_ 

th* ' may be sure of — that in 

:.. st seri a moments, when thought surg - 

thin like a sea lashed with »t, the heart of 

man must _ more than 



206 FOB HIS NAME'S SAKE. 

mere icovds to still the storm. On Galilee's lake 
there is a boat's crew battling with tempest. They 
can Ao nothing with the winds and waves. The 
gtisty howl of the wind, the frothy fury of the 
waves, blanch their cheeks and still their tongues. 
But, walking on the wave, One comes with a 
quietude which is itself sublime, and there is a 
great calm. Not for nothing was that scene given 
us. The tumult that rages within this human life 
of ours seems endless. Nothing abates it. Every 
age has its controversies. Every life has its 
storms. The moan of the sorrowful and the 
distressed, the whine of the restless and dissat- 
isfied, the demoniac howl of the bad, are all heard 
— heard by every generation. Only the miracu- 
lously frivolous and the supernaturally stoical do 
not hear them. Mere words will not allay our fears 
or excite our hopes. We need a man who is more 
than man to come and walk on these waves and say 
to us, " That which is impossible with man is pos- 
sible with God/' And so Jesus comes. He comes 
to us to be one of us. He comes and steps into 
the boat. He says, " If you perish I will perish 
with you." He comes to put Himself at our head. 
He comes and takes on Himself the responsibility 
for our being born with sinful tendencies. He 
says — Let the sin do its worst on me. I will be 
the guilty one, by identifying myself with the 
guilt} r . If sin has any rights let it take them out 



FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE. 207 

of me. If it has a right to kill, let it kill me. 

Then, I will bring all the forces of my Immortal 
Being into operation to rescue men from it. As 
David stood for all Israel in presence of Goliath, I 
Avill stand for all humanity. Single-handed I will 
fight its battles. The Goliath of Sin shall fall 
before me. And then I will demand forgiveness 
of sin for all who are willing to take it at my 
hands. And so it is. As was said to Paul in the 
ship, ' God hath given thee all who sail with thee,' 
so to Jesus Christ it can be said, God hath given 
thee all for whom thou didst die. Hence, "He is 
the Savior of all men, specially of those who be- 
lieve." Hence St. John's congratulatory words, 
"I write unto you, little children, because your 
sins are forgiven you," inasmuch as ye have re- 
pented enough? Xo, no. Inasmuch as ye have 
had correct spiritual experiences? Xo, no. Inas- 
much as ye are strictly orthodox in all points of 
theoloiiv? Xo, no. Inasmuch as there is a strong 
probability that you will be found worthy to 
receive the Divine endorsement at the last? Xo, 
no — ' ; I write unto you, my little children, because 
your sins^ are forgiven you for Ills name's sake.''' 
I am glad St. John wrote these words rather 
than any of the other Apostles, because lie it was 
who stood it out beneath the Cross and saw what 
sin could do. He saw it erect that Cross, He 
heard its vulgar reproach, its mockery, its words 



208 FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE. 

of scorn, and though his heart must have been 
nigh to breaking, he endured it. Brave, good, 
gentle soul, the King of his heart was there, on 
that Cross, crowned with thorns it is true, with 
thorns which "the unsuspecting earth had" grown 
for its Creator. They had grown up into matted 
bushes, and the sun of autumn had hardened their 
soft spikes into tough barbs. Perhaps the^honey 
bees had come to these flowers to extract sweet- 
ness, and the restless butterflies had been attracted 
for a moment by their aromatic fragrance, or the 
birds had rifled their golden berries with their 
beaks," but when the sun, that had hardened their 
soft spikes into tough barbs, saw that to such uses 
they were put, the very sun hid his face in 
despair, and there was darkness over all the land 
from the sixth to the ninth hour. Crowned with 
thorns, but yet the King of all human hearts, as 
John felt. Glad am I that it was John, the disci- 
ple whom Jesus loved, the disciple whose love 
never failed, even when his faith received the 
rudest shock ; the disciple who saw what sin could 
do, who wrote these words, "your sins are for- 
given you, for His name's sake." 

And so we are delivered from the harassing 
questions as to the sincerity, the genuineness, the 
sufficiency of our repentance. Repentance has its 
place, not an obscure one, in Christian experience. 
But, I repeat, it is an effect not a cause. If only 



FOR HIS NAME'S SAKE. 209 

we can read these words with that understanding 
of them which comes from the possession of a 
Christianized heart, they will be far more satis- 
factory to us than any other; "Your sins are 
forgiven you for His name's sake." The first 
moment after death is a moment which must infal- 
libly come to every one of us. Earth lies behind 
us silently wheeling its obedient way through the 
black-tented space. Will it make no difference 
then, as the measureless Eternity stretches before 
us, and the thought of a life which will seem a 
failure lies behind, that these words have been 
sent us by the lips of him who knew how to love 
but not how to desert the One he so much loved, 
"your sins are forgiven you for His name's 
sake." 



XV. 

SEARCHIXGS OF HEART. 



"Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow." — 
Lamentations of Jeremiah, i : 12. 

THE greatest natures are capable of the 
greatest sorrow. It is utterly inconceiva- 
ble to man of how much sorrow a nature like that 
of Jesus is capable. The prophet saw Him in 
vision, and His visage was more marred than that 
of any man's. What sorrow would be ours if, for 
a single day, we were endowed with a power of 
vision which enabled us to see underneath all the 
coverings of life, into the heart of things; if all 
persons were laid bare to us, and w T e saw the 
stern reality below the veneer and polish and dress 
and shows of things ! Yet the Divine Eye traverses 
that region, and none can cover up the interior 
life from His burning gaze. Is the Divine heart 
impassive and unmoved by what it sees? Has it 
no suffering on account of it ? 

There are two kinds of suffering, two kinds 
of sorrow. There is the suffering and sorrow 

210 



SEARCHINGS OF HEART. 211 

of guilt — dry, hard, and without contrition ; there 
is also the suffering and sorrow of love, which 
faintly represents the inner movements of the 
Divine heart. We cannot say what compensations 
of joy are in the Divine Nature, but that it is an 
impassive nature, that we cannot believe so long 
as we hold by Scripture. To no one so thor- 
oughly as to a Divine Being has this question such 
broad and deep application — " Behold and see if 
there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.'' 

Let us dwell for a short while on this thought. 
Let us not forget that the sufferings of our Lord 
historically recorded, are but part of His suffer- 
ings. To the Colossians the great Apostle speaks 
of " filling up that which is behind of the afflictions 
of Christ." There are sorrows for the Son of 
man still, for he has identified Himself with us, 
and become one with us. To Paul, afflictions and 
trials were radiant with a golden light of privilege, 
because, more than ought else they brought him 
into such close fellowship with the great Sufferer. 

And does not our Lord suffer nowf Does not 
His church cause Him sorrow? Is it not like raw 
material, so very hard to his hand as to be almost 
incapable of being moulded into any shape or form 
of beauty? Does He not sorrow over our igno- 
rance? Our mental dullness? Our pride of 
knowledge which is often worse than ignorance? 
Our assumptions of something so like infallibility 



212 SEARCHINGS OF HEART. 

that no one can distinguish it from the real thins: 
itself? Our unteachablenes ? Our cantankerous- 
ness? Our unloveliness of spirit and unlovea- 
bleness? Our hard thoughts of others? Our 
want of charity towards them that see not with us, 
eye to eye, in opinion? Do not these things cause 
Him sorrow ? 

Again, our want of patience in doing His 
work? Our expecting to reap on the very day 
we sow? Our pettishness and peevishness with 
one another ; our ill-humor, which gives a dis- 
eased color to our eye so that everything seems to 
have a jaundiced and fading look ; everything 
seems to be "in the sere and yellow leaf," and 
we find no cause of thankfulness to God anywhere. 
Does He not sorrow over our suspicion, that spirit 
which is the opposite of the charity which thinketh 
no evil, the spirit which sees nothing in those who 
are not with us but whited sepulchres and platters 
clean but on the outside ? Does He not sorrow 
over our self-importance, that spirit which leads 
us to suppose that we must always be right and 
others always wrong ; that we are called to sit on 
thrones not only to judge the erring and wander- 
ing twelve tribes of Israel, but the tribes of the 
spiritual Israel also. 

Does not our Lord sorrow over our legalism — 
that old Jewish spirit of slavishness to mere forms 
and customs which are of human device — the letter 



SEABcnnrGS of heart. 213 

which killeth ; the rigidity which knows not how 
to bend or adapt itself to weakness and feebleness 
and infirmity ? 

Must He not sorrow over our sectarianisms — 
our thinking more of mere sectional names than of 
the real unity which underlies all these ? Must 
He not sorrow over that mental and spiritual 
obtuseness which cannot, or will not, see that a 
man may be a very rigid sectarian and a very bad 
Christian ; that he may be most scrupulously 
excellent at such work as " tithing mint, anise, and 
cummin," but for the weightier matters of justice, 
judgment, and truth he may have no very sincere 
appreciation? Must He not sorrow over our inju- 
dicious, oftentimes almost untruthful speech; 
over that very great freedom that we allow our- 
selves, even in the presence of young children, to 
criticise, severely and unkindly, our fellow-mem- 
bers, our deacons, our ministers? The tongue is 
a fire, a world of iniquity, says the Apostle James. 
And he calls the man who has perfect control over 
speech a perfect man. " In many things we all 
offend ; if any man offend not in word the same is 
a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole 
body." Must not our hard speech, speech desti- 
tute of love and feeling and tender consideration 
for others, be a cause of sorrow to our Divine 
Lord? 

Yea — sometimes, must not our very^wye/'.s be 



214 SEAECHINGS OF HEART. 

a source of sorrow to Him? " Ye ask and receive 
not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume 
it on your lusts." Have we had no lust at the 
root of our desire ? No lust of power ? No lust 
of influence? No lust of lording it over others? 
No lust of impressing our own peculiar individual- 
ism on others ? Have we longed to see the poor 
crowding into our church courts ? Have we not 
secretly prayed that this and that person of influence 
might be brought in ? But have we felt glad — 
rejoiced — when some poor servant girl has come? 
Have w r e ? Have we thought that all our prayers 
and anxieties were more than answered by such a 
result as that ? 

If there had been but that one soul lost, still 
Redemption's work must all have been given for 
that one soul. Have our prayers been winged by 
Lazarus at the gate, or by Dives in the palace? 
Must not our Lord have had sorrow oftentimes 
over our limiting the Holy One of Israel : over 
our very defective appreciation of the diversity of 
His operations ? Have we not dug out our chan- 
nels, and laid our waterpipes and connected them 
with some favorite reservoir of opinion, and said 
within ourselves, "Come, O Spirit of Grace, into 
these — or, I can have no delight in thee?" But, 
instead of that, oftentimes the influences have not 
come down our channels. They have been dry. 
Yet in other ways God has sent His blessing, have 



SEARGHING8 OF HEART. &15 

we delighted in it? Have we not too often had 
that Naaman-spirit, which was not humble enough 
to receive a blessing just in the way which God 
had designed it should come. * ; Surely. I thought," 
has been our reply. And then, has not some 
weak and gentle voice whispered in our ear, "If 
the prophet had hid thee do some great thing, 
wouldst thou not have done it ? Have we never 
been proudly ambitious to do some great thing? 
Have we never sought reputation simply and been 
heedless of character^ And has not our Lord had 
continual sorrow because of this? 

Have we not been, like Peter, sometimes imper- 
tinently officious about others, instead of careful 
about our own spirits ? " Lord and what shall this 
man do?" Have we not forced our Lord to be 
sharp with us? — "If I will that he tarry till I 
come, what is that to thee ; follow thou me?" 

Instead of simply being di^cijjles, and cherishing 
the spirit of disciples, have we never done any- 
thing, or said anything to convey to others the 
impression that we are models of Christian attain- 
ment, paragons of excellency, just what others 
ought to be. in short, the guardians and watch-dogs 
of the church, licensed by our very nature to 
snaj) and bark at all intruders, or, like Scotch 
sheep-dogs, trained to worry the sheep into the 
fold? Have none of us given just cause for men 
to say, ■ if it were not for such hard men as that 



216 SEARCHINGS OF HEART. 

man, and that man, such unlovable men, I should 
think better of Christians ? ' Dear brethren, are we 
free from that spiritual Pharisaism, that ill-na- 
tured spiritual conceit which repels, from which 
even contrite souls recoil? Often, very often, no 
one but God knows how often, I have to compel 
my own spirit just to take its proper position, that 
of a sinner at the foot of the Cross. I dare not 
approach God as a saint. I believe that I know 
something of what the Apostle felt when he wrote, 
"less than the least of all saints." Are we 
Christian brethren, content to be simply disciples 
of Jesus, sinners saved by grace, to stand where 
Paul chose to stand, a position dignified enough 
surely for any man, not boasting ourselves of how 
much we love Christ, but rejoicing in this, that 
He loved us, "who loved me, and gave Himself 
for me ? " 

Yes, truly, our Lord may well say, as He looks 
into the hearts of the members of His professing 
Church, "Behold and see, if there be any sorrow 
like unto my sorrow." When, in a court of 
Justice, a man's own witnesses seem to damage his 
cause, the case is indeed pitiful. 

And yet, our Lord's deepest, profoundest, 
tenderest sorrow does not arise from any inconsist- 
encies, or defects, or blunders, or ignorances, or 
wilfulnesses which He sees among those who 
believe in Him, trust Him and look to Him, 



SEABCRIXGS OF HEART. 217 

many of whom do their feeble, blundering best, 
to serve Him. For, every man who names the 
name of Christ, and departs from iniquity, honors 
Christ. Just as every young man who enters a 
school honors that school, by the trust he reposes 
in its teachers. Just as a tyro in art honors a 
G'reat Master by copying his works. Christ's church 
is practically a school ; not a museum in which to 
deposit specimens of antique theologies and dead 
saints ; not a gallery of painting and sculpture in 
which to display finished productions ; it is a 
school for Christians in the making. There are no 
finished specimens to be found in it. This world 
is God's manufactory, not His show-room. But 
wherever there is trust in God and confidence 
towards God, there is reconciliation with God. 
There is no Christian man without his inconsisten- 
cies, but these are the mere unfinished parts of 
character. And yet, between the soul that trusts 
itself into Christ's hands, and the soul that 
witholds itself for itself, there is a whole a< u lf of 
difference. Naturally, one may be a finer specimen 
of man than the other, intellectually superior, 
more refined in sensibility, more companionable, 
and yet as to the interior possibilities there is no 
comparison. Christ in a man, as Paul puts it, 
may be but as a seed in him, but it is a seed which 
shall rend the rock, and split the mountain in its 
growth. Christ in a man is a germ in lliin which 



218 SEARCHING® OF HEART. 

demands Eternity for its development. Therefore 
is it that to get the idea of Christ uppermost in the 
mind renews the mind, to get the love of Christ 
supreme in the heart renews the affect ional nature. 
As to those who trust Him, our Lord can wait the 
perfect development of Himself into dominion 
over all weaknesses, ignorances, wilfulnesses, 
inconsistencies whatsoever. It is a mere matter 
of time. His chief sorrow is from another source. 
His chief sorrow was not over Peter who denied 
Him ; not over the two disciples who wanted to be 
the greatest in His kingdom ; not over Magdalene 
whose soul He cleansed of its seven-fold tyranny of 
evil — for she loved much, having much forgiven — 
not over Nicodemus who came secretly, under the 
deep shadows of night ; not over the disciples who 
slept in Gethsemane and could not watch with 
Him one hour ; not over the men who forsook 
Him and fled ; not even over the dying thief. His 
chief sorrow was not over these, but over the 
people of the city who rejected Him — " Oh, Jeru- 
salem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, 
and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how 
often would I have gathered thy children together, 
even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her 
wings, and ye would not!" — over Judas who 
betrayed Him, " good for that man had he never 
been born." And, in these days, His chief 
sorrow is not over His Church, with all its multi- 



SEARCHIXGS OF HEART. 219 

plied inconsistencies, ignorances, and wilfulnesses, 
but over others ; over you young man, to whom 
He has given a godly father and mother, who 
daily pray for you, though you hear it not, who 
love you with a love that as far as a finite thing 
can represent an infinite thing, is like the love of 
God. Oh, to be born in Heaven and to descend 
into Hell ; to be cradled in Bethlehem and thence 
to sink into an inhabitant of Sodom ; to breathe 
your first breath in the land of Promise, and to 
choose in preference the bondage of Egypt ; to 
resist successfully the undying solicitude of a 
heart beating with a pulse that is timed to God's 
love ; to be the child of a house on the lintel and 
side-posts of which the blood of Calvary had been 
sprinkled ; to be dedicated to God in Baptism ; to 
have all the privileges of the Kingdom of Heaven 
claimed on your behalf; to be a child of God's 
Covenant made with your parents, and to break 
away, finally and forever from this, it seems to me 
at times impossible. It seems to me at times as 
if the power of God as well as the grace of 
God were pledged to your arrestment. Our 
Lord looking on you may well say, ik was any 
sorrow, like unto my sorrow ? " 

Over you also, fathers and mothers, men and 
women bearing the holiest names that this world 
knows ; into whose arms a gift has been placed than 
which this earth can furnish none so marvellous or 



220 SEARCHINGS OF HEART. 

wonderful — have you appreciated that gift at its 
true value ? Have you realized that the flesh was 
only a platform for an immortal spirit to stand upon ? 
Must there not be sorrow in the heart of Christ 
as He sees fathers and mothers treating children as 
though they were mere animal forms, or at the 
most, mere children of this world, to be trained 
for this world, everything nurtured in them except 
that which is highest, that which is distinctive, that 
which makes them men ? In every child there is 
a religious instinct, and it largely depends upon 
what the parents are as to whether that religious 
instinct shall be cultured or crushed ; whether it 
shall become conviction, or remain for a while in 
an undeveloped condition and eventually become 
an accusing Conscience. I believe that most of 
the sad disappointments that parents meet with in 
their children are simply Nature working its own 
revenge for this insult offered to the religious 
instinct. Have those of you who are fathers and 
mothers not brought much sorrow into the heart 
of Jesus by refusing to train the religious instinct 
in your child? That which fathers and mothers 
do, children naturally want to do. Are you, 
fathers and mothers, just exactly where you ought 
to be, considering what your opportunities and 
responsibilities are? You love your children, 
why do you not love them all through, soul as 
well as body, spirit as well as soul? I have 



SEARCHIXGS OF HEART. 221 

sometimes met with cases of parents who said to 
their children, "go," but not "come." Better, 
far better life than' speech. Better example than 
precept. But more human and kindly the spirit 
which says, " go "than that which resists the re- 
ligious instinct of childhood in its feelings after 
God. What must have been the sensations of 
that mother, whose son, in the condemned cell, 
turned upon her, almost with the rage of a tiger, 
and said, "If you had been a better woman I 
should never have been here." 

"When our Lord looks from the height of His 
Infinite Knowledge upon the world of fathers and 
mothers, and sees how, by their example, they are 
bending their children's souls away from Him, 
how often must His feeling be like to that ex- 
pressed in these words, " Is anj r sorrow like unto 
my sorrow." 

But we cannot pursue this line of reflection 
into many of its details. And yet does it not 
touch every one of us? What sorrow greater 
than that of being perpetually misunderstood? 
And who knows this sorrow as the Son of God 
knows it? Have Ave not misunderstood Him 
most ein-etriouslv? Have* we not thought of 
Him as the condemnor? Yet is He the Saviour. 
Have we not regarded Him as though He came to 
destroy? Yet He came to stand between us and 
destruction. What sorrow is more cutting: and 



222 SEABCHINGS OF HEABT. 

lacerating and torturing to the heart than to be 
suspected? Has not Jesus been the object of 
our suspicion? Have we not said by our conduct, 
' I dare not trust Him, I dare not commit myself 
to Him?' Have we not exalted men above Him? 
Have we not feared men ? Have w 7 e not allowed 
the frowns of men to be more to us than the 
smiles of the Savior? Have we not steadily re- 
fused to follow our best inclinations ? Have we 
not done our best to put out the light which was 
in our consciences? Have we not resisted our 
own tenderest impulses? Have we not thought 
that we might have too much of Christ? Have we 
not persisted in thinking that the call of Christ 
was to gloom, and despondency and joylessness 
and narrowness of life ? Have we not ignorantly 
misinterpreted the plainest truths of Holy Writ ? 
Have we not resisted the Holy Spirit's movements 
in our souls? Have we not almost forced our- 
selves into darkness? And all this has been so 
much of sorroiv poured into the lot of the Son of 
Man. Yet still He broods over us, with a love 
that many waters cannot quench. Still He shows 
us His Crown of Thorns, His garments all red 
with blood, His pierced hands and feet, His spear 
thrust side ; still He reminds us of Calvary, and 
of Gethsemane and asks us still, "Was any 
sorrow like unto my sorrow ?" 



XVI. 
THE DIYIXE RESPONSIBILITY. 



But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and He 
that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not, for I have redeemed thee, I 
I have called thee by thy name : thou are mine. — Isaiah, xliii : I. 

THE subject of Responsibility has recently 
occupied our attention. First, the Respon- 
sibility of the Ungodly for his ungodliness 
and all its consequences. Secondly, the Respon- 
sibility of the Christian — consisting mainly 
in loyalty to Christ. And now I am about 
to venture upon an extension of this thought 
of Responsibility. I purpose to pursue it into 
a region, the most sacred of all — and to 
speak — I hope without presumption, I hope with 
reverence, I hope so as not to expose myself to 
any just charge of rashness or impiety — I propose 
to speak of the Divine responsibility. 

For, surely, Responsibility is not a word that 
can be limited to man. It must belong to those 
higher orders of created intelligence known to us 
as angels of various degrees. It must belong to 

223 



224 THE DIVINE RESPONSIBILITY. 

the Eternal One Himself. It must be that He 
holds Himself responsible for the Creation and its 
consequences. This is not a thought that often 
comes within the sphere of our meditation — nor 
should it. Such a thought is not to be brought 
into the area of flippant discussion or heated con- 
troversy. It belongs rather to those moments of 
meditation when all voices are quiet but one, and 
that one voice chastened into subduedness consist- 
ent with the deepest reverence. And yet surely 
we may speak on so sacred a theme without being 
blameworthy. If responsibility belongs to the 
creature made in the image of God, it is inherited 
responsibility ; it comes down from Him who 
made him. 

Let us approach the subject cautiously. God's 
revelation of Himself is intended to be a light to 
the mind, and a joy to the heart. If the word 
' God' means " the good one," be sure that all that 
is made known to us of God in any way, or 
through any medium, is for our good. Every 
word by which He has made Himself known is our 
property — to be sacredly guarded for what it 
contains. Everyone who knows anything of Scrip- 
ture knows how gradual has been the revelation 
of God to the human race. Not till we reach the 
time of David do we get the word father as 
applied to Deity, and then only in a figurative sort 
of way. Isaiah prophecies that one of the signs 



THE DIVINE RESPONSIBILITY. 225 

of the Christian dispensation shall be that the 
name of God as revealed in Christ shall be "the 
Everlasting Father." Men had known Deity as 
the Self-Existent God — the source of life. They 
had thought of Him as the God of Providence, the 
Great Provider, who had them in His hands, and 
would care for them, and that is about the utmost 
practical view attained in the Old Testament. 
In that wonderful book of Job, the epitomised life 
of the human race, we have the thought of an 
unrealized Redeemer, — but "My Father and your 
Father, my God and your God" is Xew Testament 
language, and post-resurrection speech at that. 
This speech leads us to the thought of the Divine 
Responsibility. It is not our invention but God's 
revelation, that, 'like as a father pitieth his chil- 
dren so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.' We 
have a right, then, to say that at least the same 
measure of responsibility which belongs to a father 
for the nourishment, education, and development 
of his child belongs to the great Eternal Father 
for us all. He has made us, and not we our- 
selves. TTe are not responsible for being here — 
that responsibility belongs outside of us. We are 
not responsible for the laws which work in our 
own constitutions, for we did not create those 
law-. AVc are not responsible for anything which 
is out of our own power, that is evident — so evi- 
dent that it is useless to argue the matter. I am 



226 THE DIVINE RESPONSIBILITY. 

not responsible for the original tendency to sinful- 
ness which was in my nature when born into this 
world. Nor am I responsible for being born, nor 
for being born where I was born ; nor for having 
just those parents which were mine ; nor for 
being just so high and just so heavy ; nor for having 
the temperament and disposition with which I was 
born. Xor are you responsible for like matters 
in yourself; nor is any one. . These things lie 
beyond our election and choice. Neither you, 
nor I, nor any one is responsible for the fact that 
we came into the world puling babes, nor for the 
laws at the back of our life which co-operated to 
that result — all this responsibility lies outside of 
us. I suppose that in the generations behind us 
there have lived people who verily persuaded 
themselves that they were responsible for the sin 
of Adam — that the guilt of what was done thou- 
sands of years ago rested upon them — that they 
were doomed because an ancestor of generations 
ago was a wilful sinner. 

It is very wonderful that any one should be 
found capable of training his conscience to the 
acceptance of such a fallacy. Every man inherits 
tendencies from past generations — that Ave know. 
TVhen the first of men wilfully disobeyed God, He 
started in himself a tendency, which, if not re- 
sisted, would become a habit of wrong doing — 
and that habit would create a tendency in the next 



THE DIY1XE RESPONSIBILITY. 227 



* 



generation, and in the next, and so on. And 
that is what is meant by original sin — the ten- 
dency created by generations past to wrong — 
stamping its impress upon mind and heart, yea, 
upon the physical organism. It is so in the 
animal world. In the past, dogs have been trained 
to fold sheep, and the instruction has become a 
habit, and the habit has created a tendency in the 
next generation to do the same thing, and has 
become fixed — a second nature, as we say. And 
this law r runs through all creation, even into the 
vegetable world. Drunkenness in a parent creates 
a tendency to drunkenness in a child. The thiev- 
ing propensity in a family has been known to 
propagate itself from generation to generation. 
The disposition to speak falsehood, too — until 
whole nations have lost the sense of the deep 
disgrace of lying. Xow, this is what theology 
means by original sin. It has no idea of original 
guilt. It is contradiction in language, and confu- 
sion in thought to speak of original guilt. 

Xow He who made man is responsible for the 
original law by which tendencies to good and evil 
can be propagated from sire to son. The law is 
not evil : it is good. But good laws are often 
used for bad purposes. An illustration may make 
it clear. From a reservoir of pure water, pipes 
are laid to every house in a city. Those pipes 
were laid for the conveyance of pure, wholesome 



228 THE DIVINE RESPONSIBILITY. 

water for the benefit of a large population. That 
was the original design and intention. But sup- 
pose that city should be besieged by a barbarian 
army — suppose the army should surround the 
reservoir and poison the waters, the very pipes 
which were laid for the conveyance of life would 
be conduits for the conveyance of death. But 
that was not their original design. The city which 
constructed, at a great cost, that water-system, is 
not responsible for this diabolic abuse of the sys- 
tem. And so our guilt does not extend to Deity. 
He is responsible for the beneficent law, not for 
the sin which has been transmitted along it. The 
very idea of intelligence involves freedom. Either 
there must be freedom, or there can be no intelli- 
gence and no morality. Man could not be what 
he is without this liberty. He must have the 
ability to go wrong, or he cannot have the ability 
to do right. God is responsible for making man 
what he is, or rather was, and man is responsible 
for abusing his freedom. The law is o- od if a 
man use it lawfully. 

Let us go a step further. "We cannot conceive 
of an Omniscient God, without admitting that He 
must have foreseen that the creature He made 
would abuse his liberty. God must have foreseen 
the fall of His creature from a condition of inno- 
cence. Does the Divine Responsibility extend to 
making such provision as would prevent it? 



THE DIYIXE RESPONSIBILITY. 229 

Clearly not. Xo such provision has been made. 
We cannot conceive how it could be made, and 
yet leave man a free moral agent, not a machine. 
The Divine responsibility extends to the providing 
a means whereby not simply to develop an inno- 
cent man, but to save a guilty man from the 
spiritual consequences of his sin. From all the 
consequences he cannot be saved — from the fatal 
consequences he can. That God did anticipate 
the foil from innocence of His creature, and pro- 
vide for meeting man in a fallen condition is evi- 
dent from one single expression " The Lamb slain 
before the foundation of the world." In the 
Divine purpose, plan, and intention, provision was 
made for the sinner's escape from the fatal conse- 
quences of his sin before there was a sinner to sin. 
Eedemption was no after-thought. It was woven 
into the very web of creation. It was no patching 
up of badly-done work, as some have irreverently 
phrased it, but the provision made by Divine Love 
for all contingencies which should arise. Once 
apprehend the Divine character as revealed in 
Holy Writ, and then it will be easy to see that 
Redemption is the bringing into operation of the 
Divine Love just as creation is the bringing into 
operation of the Divine energy. If the Creator 
puts on this earth a creature with a liability in his 
nature to fall, is He not responsible for making 
provision for his redemption and restoration ? If 



230 THE DIVINE RESPONSIBILITY. 

you think for a while of the question you will he 
disposed to give hut one answer. I know how often 
it has been said that if after the fall God had left 
man to himself, and visited him no more, he 
would have been just. Xo one, it is said, could 
possibly have impeached his justice. It may be 
so. I do not care to argue the question. I think 
Scripture does not naturally produce the impres- 
sion upon the mind that the attributes of God are 
at variance one with the other, and that there is 
eternal discord in the Divine nature. It has never 
produced that impression on my own mind, and I 
very much question if ever it can be charged with 
producing that impression on any mind. I have 
read a discourse in which, with fine dramatic 
effect, the revealed attributes of Deity were 
arraigned the one against the other. Justice came 
with flaming sword, and demanded the execution 
of the offender. She summoned her witnesses to 
show that she had done this and that, and sentence 
was about to be pronounced. But Mercy stepped 
in and pleaded, with sobs in her voice and tears 
in her eyes, and at last succeeded in prevailing on 
Justice to forego her claim. And so for the sake 
of Mercy — or by Mercy — Justice was defeated. 
Xow, for our own convenience, it may be necessary 
at times to speak of justice and at other times of 
mercy. But justice and mercy in God are never 
represented as in antagonism. They ever go 



THE DIVINE RESPONSIBILITY. 231 

hand-in-hand together — like light and heat in the 
sunbeams. It would be nothing short of foolish for 
me to try, in a brief sermon, to offer anything 
upon what has been called " the philosophy of the 

plan of salvation/" Whether any single human 
soul has ever been brought into fellowship with 
Christ through the comprehension of i% the philos- 
ophy of the plan of salvation," I very much doubt. 
That part of human nature which we call the ' heart ' 
has more to do with the realizing of the Redemp- 
tion wrought out on Calvary. The work of 
Redemption excites a confidence towards God 
which the work of Creation never can. When the 
revelation comes to the sinning soul — < ; Trust in 
Me ; hope in Me ; lean upon Me ; I have found 
a Ransom : I am a Just God and a Savior" — a 
just God, because a Savior — how can such a 
message do aught else than excite confidence in 
the soul, and rouse faith into action? We see, 
from the fact brought into full visibility on Calvary, 
that the Creator of man holds Himself responsible 
for man's redemption — that is to say, for doing 
all and everything essential so to counteract the 
effects of inherited sin as that it shall be easier for 
man to reach heaven than not to reach it. 

When God opened the eyes of the great apostle 
he saw this truth, that " Where sin abounded, 
grace did much more abound," or, as it is more 
correctly, " superabounded," abounded oyer and 



232 THE DIVINE RESPONSIBILITY. 

above. In this dispensation of things a lost man 
has not simply to reject God as a Creator, but 
God as a Redeemer — God in Christ — the God 
who has done all and everything possible to be 
done to nullify the fatal results of sin. There are 
physical consequences of sin — and these cannot 
be interfered with. They become useful as chastise- 
ments, as evangelical forces in the body of man 
working a knowledge of what sin is, and under 
God working repentance for sin. But the fatal 
consequences God has provided against in redemp- 
tion, for, like as with Paul's ship which was utterly 
lost, but they who were in it all came safe to land, 
so with this body of ours, sin-cursed, and there- 
fore not fitted for the permanent body in which 
the soul shall live eternally ; it shall be lost, but 
the soul shall reach the home-land, and be clothed 
upon with its house " which is from heaven." In 
Redemption our God comes to us and shares our 
responsibility for sin. Oh, it is a wonderful 
thought that, but a true one ! To a degree God 
makes himself responsible for human sin, and pro- 
vides redemption, provides a new attitude for the 
soul. Formerly the law was, Do this and live. 
Man fell out from that. Now the law is, Trust and 
live. Have faith and live. " I have found a ran- 
som." As though God should say, the responsibility 
for sin is not all yours, some of it is Mine. Don't 
shrink back from the thought. It does not make our 



THE DIVINE RESPONSIBILITY. 233 

God the author of sin. But He became sin for us 
who knew no sin. He became as though He were a 
sinner. In other words, He took upon Himself 
the responsibility for man's sin to the extent of 
providing a redemption. And was it not like 
Him ? Think of a father who should blot out the 
name of his son from the family register the 
moment he sinned, and do nothing to reclaim 
him ! What would you think of such a father ? 
Would you not go to him and reason with him — 
"You were the medium of that child's life, he is 
your child, you are responsible for his existence, 
and for doing to the utmost possible for that 
child's redemption and restoration ? " And can 
that which is true of an earthly father towards his 
child be untrue of the Eternal Father? Having 
created our spirit's life ; having breathed into our 
nostrils the breath of life, and made us living souls, 
is the Eternal Father not responsible for the doing 
all that is possible for Him to do to save us if we 
sin, to rescue us if Ave fall, to educate us, to 
discipline us, and that with all patience, with all 
tenderness, yet with all the firmness and unyielding 
righteousness which belong to the fatherly rela- 
tionship? And herein, in this earthly relationship 
of father and child, and the responsibility which 
holds from the one to the other, we get the best 
commentary the earth holds on the Divine 
Responsibility. 



234 TUB DIVINE RESPONSIBILITY. 

You remember the complimentary word uttered 
respecting Abraham : "For I know him that he 
will command his children ; " and in every father 
there is lodged the right to command — the duty 
to command. That weak tenderness which per- 
mits disobedience to go unrebuked and unpun- 
ished, is not Divine tenderness. It is the frailty 
of human irresoluteness. There is nothing of that 
in God. The commands and precepts of His 
Word indicate not merely the magistrate or the 
ruler. They betoken the Father — the Divine 
Father — who knows what His children do not 
know, who would shield them from every harm, 
and when they are broken and bruised, heal them. 
Christian brethren, is there nothing for our souls 
to rest upon in this, that we are not our own 
creators, not our own in any sense, but God's; 
that He having created us, is responsible for 
redeeming us? Does it not help us to get rid of 
those crude, almost barbaric, thoughts of God, 
which even Christian minds have sometimes per- 
mitted themselves to entertain? Shylock, deter- 
mined to have his pound of flesh, is not the Bible 
idea of God. But the Parable of the Prodigal Son 
is our Lord's idea ; and oh, how lovely and beauti- 
ful the idea is ! Let us cherish it, in the full assur- 
ance that it represents — though faintly, } T et truly 
— the eternal disposition of our God towards all 
returning prodigals and all sorrowing sinners. 



XVII. 
PREDESTINATION. 



" Predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all 
things after the counsel of his own will.'' — Eflkesians, i. II. 

HOW often people get frightened at a word. 
There has been no inconsiderable fright 
at the first word in this text — ' predestinated' — 
or, as in the Xew Version ' fore-ordained.' Cal- 
vinism has been associated with such words as 
'predestination' and ' fore-ordination.' And 
these words have been interpreted theologically 
rather than etymologically. It is very interesting 
to know what Calvin meant by those words, 
because he was one of the ruling minds of his 
time. It is of more importance to know what 
Paul meant by them — for he was specially called 
of God to teach spiritual truth because he was 
specially fitted to teach it — although he did not 
think that he was. Like Moses, he had a very 
low idea of his own competency; but the lives of 
both men proved that there was no mistake made 

235 



236 PREDESTINA TIOX. 

when the one was called to Leadership and the 
other to Apostleship. The self-distrusting man is 
generally the man to choose. His distrust of 
himself will throw him back upon God. "Lord 
what wilt thou have me to do" will be his perpet- 
ual prayer. 

What is our relation to leaders in the Church of 
Christ, leaders of thought, I mean? Tamely to 
submit to everything they suggest, as though it 
must be truth? Is that our duty? 

Or, to resist them simply because they are 
leaders, in a spirit of snappish independence? 
Neither the one nor the other. Calvin must have 
learnt all that he knew of theology from the 
Apostle Paul. Did he interpret him aright? 
That is the question. How are we to answer it? 
By comparing one part of the Apostle's teaching 
with another — and then comparing the whole of 
it with what other Apostles said, and specially 
with what our Lord Himself said and did. Only 
thus can we know. 

Every generation has its way of looking at 
things. The generation of Calvin saw that there 
were law and order in the world — and dreaded 
anarchy, dreaded the uprising of the people, 
dreaded revolution. They preached a theology of 
law and order. God was King, absolute monarch, 
Judge. There was no appeal from Him. So far 
they were right. But when they went farther and 



PREDESTIXATIOX. 237 

said, we understand perfectly what God's will is, 
and there is no appeal from ns, then they went a 
step too far. Still, the result of their influence 
on their own time was very beneficial. Never in 
the world's history, has a city been better 
ruled than was Geneva under Calvin. And 
while his interpretations of Scripture have 
been improved upon in many particulars, yet 
there are elements in his teaching which are 
true for ever. Rightly interpreted, the doc- 
trine of the Divine Sovereignty is full of consola- 
tion. The inference from it is law and order. 
If God be not Sovereign who is ? Man ? But 
man is a myriad-headed creature. The Sover- 
eignty of man means anarchy. And what shall 
we say to Calvin's assertion that whatever God 
wills is right? Eead in the light of Scripture it 
can only mean whatever God wills is good, not 
simply because He wills it, but because it is for 
the highest good of His creatures. You may turn 
the sentence round and read it the other way — 
whatever is right God wills. Calvin, I have no 
doubt, felt at heart when he proclaimed the Divine 
Sovereignty as absolute, and the Divine will as 
supreme, as felt David when he prayed " Let me 
fall into the hands of God for His mercies are 
great, but let me not fall into the hands of man.*' 
But whatever Calvin meant, and whatever v.wy 
great teachers mean, you and I have the same 



238 PREDESTINATION. 

living spring from which to draw our water of life 
as they had. We can go to the Scriptures them- 
selves. And the only way to arrive at that union 
of the church of Christ which is so necessary is to 
go back to the Scriptures. Any man and every 
man who makes more of mere sectarian leaders 
than of the leaders which God Himself appointed 
is condemned by these Scriptures. Read what St. 
Paul saj^s about this derisive spirit — "One says 
I am of Paul, another, I am of Apollos, another, I 
am of Cephas." St. Paul condemns the whole thing. 
He says, ' while you talk in that way you are 
carnal in mind, not spiritual. Who is Paul and 
who is Apollos? Ministers by whom ye believed. 
Believed in whom ? In Paul ? In Apollos ? Nay ; 
in Christ. It was Christ who was crucified for 
you. Not Paul, or Apollos or Cephas.' Now 
this is the spirit which every true successor of the 
Apostles will stand for. A leader who leads men 
to himself and not to Christ is a usurper. None 
of us ouo'ht to be satisfied until we are sure that 
we have correctly apprehended the ideas which 
these Apostolic men gave to the world. Of course, 
the man who gives more time, and more research 
will be likely to be nearer the exact truth. We 
must remember this however, that the whole of 
any truth is never apprehended by one man or in 
one generation. In the Roman Empire, they used 
to call a very small section of the earth the world. 



PBEDESTIXAT10X. 239 

The word ' world ' to-day means vastly more than 
it did then. But what they had of it was good 
and useful for them. But it was only a piece. 
So it is in regard to the world of mind, and the 
world of spirit. It is being discovered all the 
time. The opinions which the men of the past 
held were not entirely false, they were only par- 
tial, crude, and incomplete. We must remember 
that the duty which Jesus Christ has laid upon us 
is not to know everything, but to be learners and 
followers of Him. To follow a person, to get a 
certain type of character, not to be mentally 
correct simply, that is what our Lord asks. He 
asks what all can do ; His claims are of such a 
nature that they have universal applicability. 
Children, young men and maidens, adults and 
old men, all can follow a person, all can aim at a 
certain type of character. In a word, all can be 
Christians. The beginnings of Christian life are 
very simple, so long as we go to the Xew Testa- 
ment ; they are complicated and difficult only 
when man begins to introduce his inventions and 
confusions into them. 

The Church is at one and the same time a 
school-house ; a hospital ; a temporary home. 
But before we can learn what it has to teach, we 
must be in it. The child enters and then begins 
to learn. AVc come into the Church not to display 
our perfections, for we have none ; but to learn 



240 PREDESTINATION. 

about that Kingdom of God of which our Lord 
spake so much ; to learn about ourselves and about 
God. For, there is nothing on which we seem to 
exercise our intelligence so lazily as on our own 
nature and its present needs and future possibilties. 
Now when St Paul speaks of our being predes- 
tinated or fore-ordained, he is speaking about this 
nature of ours and what it was made for ? He 
says in effect, that the idea of a thing is in the 
constitution of the thing itself — but it is also in 
the mind of God before it is in our mind. Fore- 
ordination is that to which the thins; was ordained 
before it w T as actually made. The idea of this 
building was in the mind of the architect before it 
was ever put on paper, before it was ever trans- 
lated into material visibility. And the idea of 
every part of it was in other minds before it was 
in his. The idea of Gothic architecture was sug- 
gested to the mind of the first man who attempted 
it, by an avenue of trees, their branehes hanging 
towards each other, forming a pecular kind of arch. 
The idea of man and the destin}^ of man was in the 
Divine mind before this world was. Man was 
made according to a divine idea and for a definite 
purpose. Now, when Jesus Christ comes into 
the world Paul sees that there is God's idea and 
purpose for man fully and clearly revealed. And 
so he begins to speak of that for which man was 
predestinated ; of that for which he was foreor- 



PREDESTINATION. 241 

dained. His mind is full of it. It does not 
depress him ; it inspires him ; animates him, 
makes life purer and sweeter, grander and more 
glorious. So much so, that in speaking to the 
Romans with these ideas of predestination in his 
mind, he cries out, "If God be for us, who can 
be against us." Fore-ordination is God for us, 
according to the Apostle. Predestination is God 
for us, according to the Apostle. And there can 
be no room for doubt that to the mind of St Paul 
these ideas had nothing in them of gloom or de- 
pression. But they have been so used as to bring 
gloom and depression to many minds. Predesti- 
nation means purpose. It implies an end. And 
it implies the provision necessary to carry out that 
purpose and to accomplish that end. Rightly 
viewed, it means that the Creator does not work at 
random, nor blindly, but according to a precon- 
ceived idea and along the line of the law which 
leads up to making that idea into a fact. 

In every department of life there is the perfect 
type. The perfect thing is the complete thing — 
that which cannot bo improved upon. When the 
Father of our spirits said, "Let us make man" 
he meant something more by man than you or I 
mean. He did not mean simply the gardener 
Adam, nor the herdsman Abraham, nor the smart 
bargaining man Jacob — the aboriginal Yankee — 
nor the huntsman Esau, nor the political economist 



242 PREDESTINATION. 

Joseph, nor the Lawgiver Moses, nor the physi- 
cally imposing Saul, nor the philosophical 
Epicurean Solomon, not even the magnanimous 
David, poet, prophet, king, warrior, saint, sinner, 
all in one, although David, to our great astonish- 
ment is called, " the man after God's own heart." 
I have no doubt that there are many persons who 
would be very glad to get those six words out of 
the record. This poet-king's great sin stands 
there confessed. Let us remember, that his great 
repentance stands there confessed, too. There is 
not a doubt that David was the greatest man of 
his day, and that in comparison with the men 
around him he was among the best. lie was an 
all round man, physically, mentally, spiritually. 
He touched the earth, and he touched the heavens, 
at more points than any other man of his time. 
His sympathies were more varied, his nature was 
larger than any man who then lived. But even 
this man was not the man God meant. And we 
do not get to the perfect man until we get to Jesus 
the Christ. When he appears — the very angels 
of Heaven unite to cry, "Arise, anoint him, for 
this is He " — this is the man. 

You and I and all men were predestinated to be 
according to that type and order. As to the 
quantity of our manhood, Ave cannot equal the 
Man Christ Jesus ; as to the quality, we may be 
like Him. We may be of the same type. And 



PBEDESTIXA T10N. 243 

it is the type after all which is the criterion. If 
we are of the number of those who seek to do the 
will of God, of the number of those who seek first 
the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, then 
we belong to the type of man which the Father of 
our spirits meant when He said, "Let us make 
man." I am using scientific rather than theologi- 
cal language because many of our theological 
terms are worn thread-bare. They are like Saul's 
armor, which fitted only the man for whom it was 
made. Or, like some of those coats of mail which 
I have seen hanging in the baronial halls of old 
England, very well for the men and methods of 
the past, but worse than useless for the present. 
Xo soldier would think of wearing them in modern 
warfare. It is of no use our trying to appear 
respectable in the clothes of our grandfathers, we 
cannot do it. But the same life which animated 
them animates us. The same Holy Spirit of God 
which brooded over their hearts broods over ours. 
TTe live on the same earth, but we do not put the 
vegetables which they grew on our tables. TTe 
grow our own. And so we have the same Bible 
that they had and a better system of exegesis. 
^Ye can interpret it for ourselves, and in our own 
methods, and only thus can we, in our generation, 
be as true to God as they were in theirs. To me 
predestination speaks of the end which God had 
in making man, of the t}'pe of man that the Crea- 



244 PREDESTINATION. 

tor intended, and of the unchangeable purpose 
that He has to produce that type — that type, the 
perfection and consummation of which we have in 
Jesus the Christ. A man conformed to that type 
is a man after God's own heart, not conformed to 
it he is breaking away from the destiny which God 
intended for him. 

In the latter part of this passage we are brought 
face to face with a great truth, contained in 
the words — "TTho worketh all things according 
to the counsel of Ills own will" ' Will,' as 
used in Scripture is always associated with char- 
acter. The Divine will expresses the Divine 
disposition. TTe assume often that whatever is 
done on earth is according to the Divine will, an 
assumption for which there is no evidence in our 
Lord's teaching. There is a sense in w r hich w r e 
may say that whatever is done on earth He doeth 
it, for God's laws and decrees are working here all 
the time. But a judge on the bench may have to 
commit his own son to prison. He is obliged 
to do it, or be an unjust judge, and yet it is not 
according to his will as a father. He is not dis- 
posed to do it. His will is not done when that 
son is sent to jail. And I think that there is no 
more fruitful source of error and wrong feeling, 
than the notion that all the pains and sorrows and 
losses and anxieties and burdens and afflictions 
of this life are according to God's will. They 



PREDESTINATION. 245 

most assuredly are not. Man's will has vaulted 
into the place of Sovereignty here on this earth. 
It has usurped the throne. Man has been trying 
to do his own will here for these past centuries. 
He has been persistentlv refusing to do the will of 
God. And the results are such as we see. But 
what then, says one, do you make of the words of 
the sacred penman, i; whom the Lord loveth He 
ehasteneth?" Read on. What follows? "Xot 
for His pleasure, but for our profit that we may 
be partakers of His holiness/*' It is not accord- 
ing to the will of God, to chasten us, but there is 
no other way to bring us to thoughtfulness and 
seriousness. And so, this world in which we live 
does not represent what society would be if the 
will of God were done. It is a school-house, not 
a home. It is a place of discipline, not of rest. 
It is a place where man has to learn a very great 
deal which is to be useful to him hereafter. But 
the will of God is not done here, speaking gener- 
ally; the will of man is. And has been for the 
centuries past. Everywhere, man is trampling 
upon God's laws for the body. His laws for the 
mind. His laws tor the heart. Everywhere mer- 
cantilism is dominating it over righteousness. 
Everywhere, those who are sincerely striving to 
do God's will are in a minority. And they are 
often last instead of first, lint in the eternal 
future many that are last will be first and many 



246 PREDESTINATION. 

that are first last. Those who are seeking to do 
God's will here are to be the statesman and prime 
ministers and leaders when God's Kingdom shall 
come. How do I know? I know because our 
Lord told His disciples so. What else can we 
make of these w^ords, "I appoint unto you a 
Kingdom, even as my Father appointed unto me, 
that ye may eat and drink at my table in my 
Kingdom (perfect fellowship) and ye shall sit on 
thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. " 
These were the representatives of the Jewish race 
w r ho w^ere doing God's will, and so they were to 
be the judges and rulers of the nation that w T as 
not doing it. 

Now, I am persuaded that we often darken our 
own understandings as to the will of God, by 
carelessly saying, "It is God's will, I must sub- 
mit." It is right, it is good to seek resignation ; to 
be brave in the hour of trial, to force down the 
rebelliousness of our spirits. And yet, to my 
mind there is more consolation in believing that 
none of these sufferings and trials are expressive 
of God's will, that they are the inevitable results 
of the rebellious will of man asserting itself from 
o-eneration to generation, until sin and death rei<rn 
everywhere. God's will is not sickness but 
health, God's will is not wretchedness but happi- 
ness. God's will is not death but life, God's will is 
not that any should perish but that all should 



PREDESTINATION. 247 

come to repentance, God's will is not hatred, 
revenge, war, and all the misery these bring. 
Barbarians may think so, Christians cannot. 
Judgment is his strange work, mercy is his 
delight. Jesus Christ revealed God's will. He 
did God's will. He died to tell us, in the most 
emphatic way possible, that man's rebellion was 
the trampling upon holy love ; that it was not 
God's will we should sin and suffer and heap up 
miseries for ourselves ; that the more we do our 
own wills, irrespective of God, the more we add 
to the accumulated miseries of our race. Believe 
this, as you must, if you sit at the feet of Jesus 
and learn of Him, and the God revealed in 
Jesus Christ becomes the great attractive centre to 
which the mind turns, and the accumulated cruel- 
ties of the world — its diseases, its malignities, its 
despotisms — its wars, and all the myriad miseries 
which afflict it, are man's and not God's. When 
man separates himself from God, ignores God, 
and lives self-centred, lives independently of God, 
lives as though he did not belong to a constitution 
of things of which God is the centre, he is adding 
fuel to the tire which the self-willed have already 
lit; he is storing up for himself, and for others, 
sorrow and trouble. And then he turns round 
upon Divine Providence and charges it with his 
own miseries. He says " God is cruel, God is 
unkind." Nay; it is man that is cruel, man that 



248 PREDESTINATION. 

is unkind. Our Lord never said, "Beware of 
God" but "beware of men." We have to be 
delivered from the tyranny of man, not from God. 
The tyranny of man over man has been and is 
something appalling. We call it by various 
misleading names, that which is proper, that which 
is the fashion and so on. The simple questions 
of what is right and w T hat wrong, what is healthy 
and good, what is the will of God, these are sel- 
dom asked. We want to get rid of the pains and 
penalties of the present and the future, but we are 
not filled full of the conviction that there is only 
one way to get rid of them, to find out what is 
God's will, and do it. When Jesus the Christ 
was here on earth he said, " I came not to do my 
own will, but the will of Him that sent me." And 
the difference between the godly and the godless 
is here, the one are the willing, the other the 
wilful. All law and order must rest on some 
immovable foundation, and there is none to be 
found but this, the revealed will of God. We 
are drifting towards anarchy in the family, in the 
Church and in the nation so long as we magnify 
individualism and idolize something we call free- 
dom, which with many, means nothing less than 
anarchy, trampling upon all law and order human 
and divine, and exalting the will of the creature 
into supremacy. Those of us who are of the 
Church of God have to proclaim the exact opposite 



PREDESTINATION. 249 

of this, for we are bound in the same bundle of 
life with Him whose boast it was " I came not to 
do my own will, but the will of Him that 
sent me." 



XVIII. 
SELF-IMPROVEMENT. 



" Take heed to thyself and to thy teaching." — I Tim., iv : 16. 

GEXIUS," says a modern writer, "is the pas- 
sion for self-improvement." While we 
may be of opinion that this is not an adequate 
definition, inasmuch as oftentimes we have met 
with men and women in whom there seemed to be 
something of that we call genius, without that 
temper which leads a man to aim at steady self- 
improvement, yet there is enough of truth in this 
definition to warrant the affirmation that genius 
is never effective unless it includes the passion 
for self-improvement. From a merely human 
point of view, the Apostle Paul was a man of 
genius. This man comes before the world with 
a life as heroic as that which any man ever lived, 
and a few letters, written, some to churches and 
two or three to individuals. Yet this life 
and these letters have immortalized him. Inspir- 
ation and genius are not the same tiling. The 
Divine Inspiration wakes the genius into life. 

250 



SELF-EVPBO YEMEXT. 251 

That which is best in any man, that which is most 
characteristic of him, will arise from its dormancy 
and latency under the influences of the Spirit of 
God. Thus, there is in nature room for that 
beautiful variety of Christian character without 
which there would be an unedifying monotomy, 
a tame uniformity in our Christian life. It has 
been assumed that if a man lias genius he does not 
need to be careful of himself, he does not need to 
aim at self-improvement. The very opposite is 
the true state of the case. It is the blood horse 
that needs the most careful training. " Take heed 
to thyself " is a word necessary for us all, but it is 
especially necessary for those of full vitality ; for 
those in whose veins the hot blood seems to coarse 
rapidly ; for those of highly-strung nervous or- 
ganization ; for those whose impulses are fiery; 
whose temperament is ardent ; whose souls have 
in them a craving that seems insatiable. If these 
do not take heed to themselves, there will be dis- 
aster. A well-balanced nature, in which the 
physical, mental, and moral seem to be in happy 
equilibrium, is not always found, perhaps seldom. 
Some one department of our organism seems to 
predominate. The tendency is to cultivate that 
which it is mosl easy to cultivate, to the neglect 
of the other. Consequently, the whole nature is 
thrown out of balance and a condition of chronic 
unhappiness is the result. 



252 SELF-IMPBO VEMENT. 

I want that we should think together this morn- 
ing of Self-improvement, though the theme seems 
juvenile ; one more fitted for a young men's 
debating society than for a Christian congregation. 
We need not, however, be afraid that under the 
leadership of the Apostle Paul, we shall keep on 
a level that is unworthy of the most experienced 
Christian. I would ask you to remark upon the 
advice which the great Apostle gives to Timothy, 
one of the earliest presbyters of the Christian 
Church. Though this man must have had special 
qualifications for his work, yet these special quali- 
fications did not preclude the necessity for diligent 
improvement of his mental powers. "Till I 
come (says the Apostle Paul) give heed to read- 
ing, to exhortation, to teaching. Neglect not the 
gift that is in thee. Take heed to thyself and to 
thy teaching." He is urged to do everything he 
can towards self-improvement. On that must 
depend his usefulness. There is no recognition 
here of any supernatural grace which would relieve 
him from the use of those means whereby ordinary 
men bring their minds into an ability of perceiv- 
ing what is truth and what error. There are no 
claims such as that of "Apostolic succession." 
The man must learn how to use the ordinary 
opportunities for self-improvement which are 
within his reach, in order that he may be qualified 
to do God's work. He must take heed to himself 



SELF-IMPRO VEMENT. 253 

first, or his teaching will not be as full of light 
and of force as it ought to be. 

And so it is with those of us who, in this year 
of our Lord 1885, are the disciples of Christ, here 
and now. Xot many men have any inward call, 
or any outward qualification to do public religious 
teaching. But, not one of us is released from the 
sweep of this injunction " Take heed unto thy- 
self.*' Every man of us is a trinity in unit}', 
body, soul, spirit. We have physical, mental and 
spiritual needs ; physical, mental and spiritual 
abilities — these constitutionally. They are in- 
cluded in the word " manhood." The physical 
is the pediment on which the mental and spiritual 
stand. It is that which confines them to this earth. 
It limits and modifies their use. There is some- 
thing that we have to learn within these present 
limitations, which will be useful to us always. 
Everything must have a beginning, and that 
beginning has necessarily to be conditioned. For 
how long our nature is capable of growth we can- 
not say. What processes it has to pass through 
before it reaches that condition in which life is 
blissful receptivity and enjoyment of all around 
it — of these we are ignorant. But growth is the 
law of our present state. AVe soon come to 
the end of our physical growth ; and strange 
though it seems, very many seem soon to conic to 
the end of their mental growth, although it must 



254 SELF-IMPROVEMENT. 

be only in seeming. But no one ever comes to 
the limit of spiritual growth so long as he is on 
this earth. AYe seem only to begin that. The 
most advanced Christian is but a little way on that 
road, the end of which is perfect accord mentally 
and affectionally w r ith the mind and heart of our 
Father in Heaven. 

Now, we have to recognize distinctly and clearly 
that the lower is for the sake of the higher. It is 
in service to it. The physical is for the sake of 
the mental, the mental for the sake of the emo- 
tional, and all for the sake of the spiritual. There 
cannot, in the nature of things, be any real self- 
improvement so long as our ideas on the relation 
of the lower to the higher are wrong. There is 
no possibility of any man living the life for which 
he was predestinated until he apprehends truly 
something about his own nature. Nor is there 
any possibility of improvement until that which is 
uppermost in man constitutionally becomes upper- 
most in thought. Inadequate views of human 
nature are at the root of personal miseries and 
social perplexities. The wise old sage who said, 
" Know thyself " said more than he knew. The 
words mean more now than they meant then. 
Man's view of himself as to what he is and what 
destined for must affect him beneficially or other- 
wise in all relations of life and in all that he does. 
Supposing a man has this view of life, "I am here 



SELF-IMPED YE3IEXT. 255 

to be as happy as I can make myself, here to 
enjoy myself, here simply to have a good time.'*' 
That is the dominating idea. You see at a alance 
its limitations. Xo heroism can ever come out of 
it; nothing really good or great or sublime. Xo 
man moving under the influence of that idea has 
ever done anything of worth or value. In the 
olden days they would have called it the Epicurean 
view of life. Take another view of life, that in 
which a man sees something to be done out 
of which comes a material reward. The idea of 
duty dawns upon him, eventually takes possession 
of him, masters him, and under its influence he 
denies himself much to which other men are 
inclined, and becomes the world's successful man 
in that region concerning which we cannot use any 
other words than those which convey respect — the 
commercial. This man becomes stoical. He uses 
one department of his nature only. He acquires, 
it may be, that kind of wealth which is represented 
by money, but he never acquires the ability of 
using his wealth benevolently so that it will 
yield the best profit to himself and others. The 
first man is selfish in one way, and this man is 
selfish in another way, but he is a better type of 
man than the first. The Stoic was a better man 
than the Epicurean. 

AVe might bring other types of men forward in 
illustration, but these two will suffice. In both 



256 SELF-I3IPR0 VEMENT. 

cases the nature is depreciated below that for 
which it was predestinated. Neither man will 
ever be good or noble. There is no possibility of 
it. The idea which these men have of manhood 
and its meaning and purpose is very much lower 
than God's idea written in the constitution of man. 
The first man never could be happy and the second 
man never can be satisfied. Why? Because, in 
both cases, the nature is larger than the idea which 
controls and dominates it. Man is unhappy and 
dissatisfied when his conduct is at war with the 
upper ranges of his nature. These two men will 
find entertainment in their several lines. In youth 
the epicurean style of life has its attractions, even 
its fascinations ; in manhood a life of duty even if 
there be in it no benevolence, no room for affec- 
tions and emotions to exercise themselves, yields 
a certain real satisfaction. But the more humane 
part of the nature is beggared and hungry. " The 
eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with 
hearing." The spiritual part of man is clamorous. 
It wants its dues, or its wine turns to venegar ; its 
milk of human kindness to gall. The physical is 
not here for itself, but for the sake of the mental, 
the mental is not here for itself, but for the sake 
of the emotional and the affeetional ; and the 
emotional and the affeetional are here for the sake 
of that which is permanent and indestructible in 
man's nature — the spiritual. As a child cries for 



SELF IMPROVEMENT. 257 

its mother so the spiritual in man cries out for its 
Father, God — " My soul is athirst for God, for the 
living God, when shall I come and appear before 
God?" Xo direr source of misery can ever come 
to a human soul than to be practically atheistic, 
for " without God " means " without hope," and 
hopelessness is the collapse of all that is highest 
and best in human nature — the total eclipse of 
the soul. He who makes another man an Atheist 
has done the crudest thing of which man is capa- 
ble. He has blotted out the Sun in the spirit's 
firmament. 

We see then that there is a limit soon reached 
to physical self-improvement, and a limit also 
soon reached to improvement arising out of any 
type or style of life which is dominated by the idea 
of pleasing one's self simply, or of doing duty 
which has relation only to that which is seen and 
temporal. Every man, even the smallest and 
meanest, is larger constitutionally than his business 
and larger than his pleasures — using that word 
as it is ordinarily used. Man's self, what the phil- 
osophers would call " the e</o,"is that which needs 
to be continuously improved. And with its 
improvement everything else belonging to the man 
will be raised, will be expanded, will be developed 
into a higher power. Let the lower nature serve 
the higher, and the higher will give back to the 
lower something in return of great value. Every- 



258 SELL-IMPBOVEMENT. 

thing in a man wakes up when his spiritual nature 
is awake. If a man be an artist, he is a better 
artist when his spiritual nature is awakened. The 
costliest pictures in all Europe are those in which 
the artists have aimed at bodying forth spiritual 
themes. It must be so. Pigments and canvass, 
with brushes and palets, do not make a man an 
artist. He may be a dealer in colors, like the man 
at the store who sells them, only on a slightly 
higher level. But no man ever yet did the hi^h- 
est work of which he is capable till his heart was 
awake, till the nature began to move and aspire. 
And the heart will not wake, the spiritual in man 
will not move in the regions limited by time and 
sense. Visiting recently the picture galleries of 
London, there was much that was pleasing, much 
to excite interest and even wonder, but the most 
impressive painting even in this matter-of-fact age, 
is that which cannot be done except under the 
high inspirations which belong to meditation on 
Christian themes. Muncacksy's "Calvary" and 
Ilolman Hunt's ' ' Triumph of the Innocents " — 
a fanciful picture representing the souls of the 
murdered innocents of Bethlehem following Jesus 
as He is taken to Eg}^pt, — these were the most 
impressive modern pictures in all London. The 
child painting in Ilolman Hunt's picture seems 
more like the old master's with the freedom and 
freshness of modern times added. A sum equal 



SELF-IMPROVEMENT. 259 

to three-hundred and seventjMive thousand dollars 
was given very recently by the British Government 
for a religious painting. Artists of all classes 
never seem to do their utmost and best till the 
spiritual nature comes into vigorous exercise. 
And so it is every where. No man is really 
himself until the spirit within him is awake. The 
Xew Testament calls him "dead" till then. It 
admonishes him in this wise " Awake thou that 
sleepest and arise from the dead, and Christ shall 
give thee light." It is all but literally true that a 
man is never alive until that which is characteristic 
of him, as man, is alive. 

And the distinctive thing in man, that which 
elevates him above all other creations is, that he 
can consciously, and of set intent and purpose, 
worship God. He can anticipate a future, he is 
so constituted that he can plan and work towards 
an ideal which fills the imagination, however vivid 
it may be. No other animate creature can do 
this. To do this is to act as a man, to do any- 
thing less is to fall below the dignity of a man. 
Self-improvement is, then, the improvement of the 
spiritual nature. 

A t} T pe of religious life has been prevalent, we 
might say dominant, in the past which has almost 
lost siirht of three-fourths of the Pauline theology, 
anyway of the Pauline ethics. To get a man con- 
verted according to the Calvinistic idea of conver- 



260 SELF-LVPBO VEMENT. 

sion, and then pretty much to leave him as 
necessarily in a condition of safety, this has been 
dominant. Conversion means turning the life 
Christwards instead of turning the back upon 
Christ and His salvation. But to turn round and 
stand still is not the Apostolic idea of being a 
Christian. Any new truth entering the mind 
brings light, and light means life and life means 
activity. How is it possible for a man, into whose 
mind has come the truth of a Redeemer in Christ, 
into whose heart has come a new love, the love of 
that Redeemer, how is it possible for him to be 
the same he was before ? To stand and gaze at 
Christ Jesus is not conversion — to receive Him 
is. "To them that received Him to them gave 
He power to become the sons of God." Conver- 
sion is the first step in a new T and higher life. It 
is the man claiming that which, in God's ordain- 
ment, belongs to him. It is the first step so far 
as individual choice is concerned to realizing one's 
manhood. But we do a man harm if we make so 
much of it that all else is as nothing. The Holy 
Spirit is a Teacher, "He shall teach you all 
things." AVe are at school — learning how to be 
men and women according to God's idea of men 
and women. How is our spiritual nature to be 
developed into more and yet more until it becomes 
the undisputed sovereign of our constitution ? The 
parable of our necessities is found in the material 



SELF-IMPBOVEMEtfT. 261 

frame. It can healthfully live only in an atmo- 
sphere suited to it. It needs for its nourishment 
food convenient for it. It needs exercise. So it 
is with us mentally. So is it spiritually. Christ- 
ianity is the atmosphere suited to the spirit's life. 
That spirit needs truth to feed upon. It needs 
fellowship with other spirits. Whatever promotes 
faith purifies the soul. Whatever generates hope 
puts courage into the soul, whatever intensifies 
affection warms and vitalizes the spirit of man. 
We know from experience of eighteen hundred 
and more years that there is nothing in the world 
which does this like the Christian religion. The 
best, the strongest, the grandest specimens of 
manhood have grown up under the inspiration 
of the facts and truths of Christianity. There are 
other religions in the world, and I would not 
deprive men of them if I could not give them 
something better. It it is better for a man to be 
chained even to the idea of God as over him than 
to be without the idea. It is much better to be 
held to the allegiance we owe to Deit} r by an at- 
traction which draws our spirits into loving and 
reverent homage. It is impossible to compel any 
man to be a Christian because it is impossible to 
compel love. The heart of man must feel drawn 
to the object set before it. And so we fail to do 
any justice to the Christian religion unless its 
relation to the heart of man be presented so as to 



262 SELF-IMPROVEMENT. 

wake that heart into response. Along this line 
all self-improvement must proceed. TTe must 
take heed to ourselves. 

I venture to add that there is no spiritual self- 
improvement that is worth anything apart from 
plan and purpose. A spasmodic religiousness 
will do little. If a young man at college should 
study only when he feels in the humor he would 
be disgraced. If a man of business should a*o to 
his store or office only when the fit takes him he 
would be bankrupt. Is it likely that these 
methods of action will bankrupt men on these 
lower levels, and save them from bankruptcy on 
the higher? A spasmodic religiousness without 
high purpose and intelligent plan is the bane of 
our time. Spiritual self-improvement means so 
using the upper regions of our nature as that there 
shall be development and enlargement of our 
powers. It means that this should be clone in 
recognition of the fact that we are spirits destined 
to live on, destined to use hereafter all that here 
we have acquired of faith and hope and love in a 
wider and more blessed condition. No material 
wealth can we take with us hence, but that inward 
wealth which consists in high aspirations, purified 
affections, a will consenting to the Divine will, 
faculty co-ordinated to the needs, services and 
delights of a condition more glorious than " eye 
has ever seen or ear ever heard," that we can take 



8ELF-IMPR0 VEMENT. 263 

with us, that which shall warrant our Lord in 
saying to us " Thou hast been faithful in a few 

things, I will make thee ruler over many things — » 
enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." 



XIX. 
WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING. 



And let us not be weary in well-doing; for in due season we 
shall reap if we faint not — Galatians, vi, 9. 

THESE words are necessarily addressed to 
those who are already engaged in well- 
doing, and who, being so engaged are in danger, 
of ceasing therefrom because of the weariness 
which inevitably attends the putting forth of effort 
of any kind. Weariness may be of three kinds, 
it may be muscular, or mental, or spiritual. 
Muscular weariness comes from long continued 
physical effort ; mental weariness from excessive 
attention to such matters as demand thought ; 
spiritual weariness from loss of faith in a cause, 
or loss of love to it, or loss of hope of any tangible 
results. It is to this last kind of weariness that 
the Apostle refers. It may include the others as 
nothing worth the doing can be accomplished 
unless the resources of the mind are expended in 
the doing of it. Well-doing may be of two kinds, 

264: 



WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING. 265 

subjective, the doing well to ourselves simply, 
objective, the doing well towards others. It is 
quite true that we cannot very well separate these, 
for as Seneca says, "He that does good to 
another man does good also unto himself, not only 
in the consequences, but in the very act of doing 
it, for the conscience of well-doing is an ample 
reward/' If a man should set himself to improve 
his mind and manners simply out of a desire to be 
something better than he had been, he would still, 
in the doing, be helping others, for he would 
become a more valuable member of society. And 
on the other hand, no man can set himself to do 
good to others without receiving good himself. 
Hence, it must appear to us that God, in His 
providence, has so ordered it that well-doing is 
necessary to well-being. Every one not imbecile 
wishes well to himself. God has so appointed it 
that well-doing shall be necessary to the develop- 
ment of the soul to the highest decree of blessed- 
ness of which it is capable. 

It is assumed, however, that there is a strong 
temptation to grow weary in well-doing, to cease 
from good activities ; to let opportunities pass un- 
improved ; to allow the best of causes to suffer 
from want of riving them that assistance which it 
»mpetent to us to give. 

And this for three reasons. 1. On account of 
the indolence of our nature. Unless we are 



2G6 WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING. 

tempted to a thing by some immediate pleasure 
belonging to it, or goaded to it by some stern 
necessity, there is in us all a tendency to relapse 
into a condition of indifference and repose. Our 
physical nature seems to yield readily to the great 
law of gravitation to which everything material is 
subject, and oftentimes we too readily obey the 
lowest of all forces by which we are influenced. 
To such an extent may we yield to the material 
part of our being that it becomes tyrannous, the 
muscles refuse to do their duty readily, the diges- 
tion relapses from a healthy tone, and the whole 
system becomes impaired. And as saintship has, 
somehow or other, become associated with a pale 
face, a feeble voice, and general physical incom- 
petence, anyone is at a disadvantage who pleads 
for health of body as a duty, because of its rela- 
tion to health of mind and health of soul. 

There is the temptation to grow weary in well-do- 
ing not only on account of the indolence of our na- 
ture but also, 2nd, on account of not seeing adequate 
results to our efforts. I think that probably this is 
one of the most general reasons for weariness in the 
matter of positive well-doing. The man whose 
mind has been schooled and formed in the com- 
mercial world, especially if he has achieved large 
results in a brief period of time, assumes that he 
and others ought to have something equally tangi- 
ble to show for the expenditure of mind and 



WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING. 267 

feeling 1 in those directions which are generally 
included under the words "well-doing." We are 
constantly hearing of the disappointments which 
come to all Christian workers ; indeed of the dis- 
couragements which come to all benevolent helpers 
of all kinds. We hear far too much of this. Let 
it be recognized by us that the results of work on 
mind and heart are not as immediate, certainly 
not as visible, as the results of work in anything 
material, and that they require in order to discern 
them, and estimate them aright, a different order 
of mind, and that will do something to correct 
wrong impressions. There is a book published 
entitled "The History of Humane Progress under 
Christianity,*' which ought to be sufficient to help 
any who read it to take a broader view of this 
question of results than is generally done. More- 
over, no man but he who is unreasonable would 
ever expect to measure mental and spiritual 
results by the rules of Arithmetic. Religious sta- 
tistics are necessary, I suppose, but they are not 
the less misleading and unreliable. In the olden 
times Jehovah taught Gideon and David that 
influence did not depend on numbers. I know 
how we are all influenced by appearances ; Ave like 
outsides to be respectable. That does us no 
harm, so long as we do not substitute appearances 
for that which is invisible, mind, heart, character. 
Quality is always more than quantity. I have no 



2G8 WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING. 

doubt that some of the greatest men mentally, and 
the dcvoutest spiritually, among the New England 
clergy of to-day are to be found in villages, min- 
istering to a small handful of people who have 
not the first approach to an idea of the quality of 
the man in their pulpit. And that man may be 
the very type and synonym of faithfulness ; 
faithfulness, that which our Lord requires, that 
about which he always speaks. Nothing else 
does he ask from any of us than this — to be 
faithful — faithful to the truth as we see it, faith- 
ful to the opportunity he gives, whatever come or 
do not come from our using that opportunity as 
well as we can. 

I grant you that large results are often given. 
But the word " results" is a very indefinite kind 
of word. It may be that the results which God 
can give are not the results which you mean. 
" Only one soul brought to Christ by all my 
efforts," says a discouraged Sunday School 
teacher. Let us look at that expression a moment. 
Supposing that Sunday School teacher had built 
the Pyramids it would have been undeniably a 
great result of persistent labor, but it would have 
been such labor as would last at the longest for a 
limited time, and its use would be problematical, 
for we arc not very sure why and for what the 
pyramids were built. Supposing one soul is 
brought to Christ, and permanently united to 



WEARINE88 IN WELL-LOIS G. 269 

Christ by the love and faith of the heart, so united 
that that soul becomes a faithful Christian soul, 
living a life of love and faith, doing good to others, 
and those others doing: good to a wider circle 
still, and so from generation to generation the in- 
fluence broadens, how can you calculate the result? 
Admit the Immortality of that soul, follow it 
beyond the confines of the present, into Eternity; 
what then? The results are not measured, nor 
are they measurable. Who has done the greatest 
work, he who built the pyramids, or that discour- 
aged Sunday School teacher who brought one soul 
to Christ, into living union with the life-giving 
Savior? Am I romancing in making such a 
comparison? Is there anything unreasonable in 
suggesting that work in that material which we 
call " mind " and "soul" is essentially different 
from work on matter ? If our Lord could ask the 
question and yet be reasonable, " what shall it 
profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose 
his own soul? If He could put a " soul "against a 
" world " and appraise it as more valuable, is the 
comparison we have made illegitimate? Results 
are not to be estimated bv material or arithmetical 
measurements. In speaking to any who have been 
engaged in well-doing and have become weary in 
it, I would rather remind them that our Lord does 
not put us upon achieving results but upon being 
faithful to Him and our convictions. If tangible 



270 WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING. 

or visible results come, we will be all the more 
thankful, but if not, the duty of faithfulness still 
remains. Some results are sure to come. An 
Apostle who knew what it was to live a martyr's 
life has left it on record, that no good, honest, 
Christian work ever yet failed, " Be }^e steadfast, 
immovable, always abounding in the work of the 
Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is 
not in vain in the Lord." 

3. And this brings me to a third source of 
weariness and discouragement in well-doino;, our 
narrow and inadequate views of life. We con- 
stantly forget that this life of ours is, as to every- 
thing mental and spiritual, the sowing time, not 
the time of reaping. Evidently this is the thought 
in the mind of the Apostle, " for, in due season, 
ye shall reap if ye faint not." The idea of reaping 
involves the idea of sowing. 

When a farmer sows seed he virtually commits 
it to fructifying influences over which he has no 
control. He cannot command the sunlight, nor 
the rain, nor a suitable season for ingathering. 
He is obliged to trust in a power not his own, and 
in a beneficence which he calls Nature, but which 
means God. And so when we sow seeds of truth 
in a human mind, or the seeds of kindly deeds in 
human hearts, we commit the seed to God and 
ITis Providence. And as the farmer has long 
pnlience, so ought we to have long patience. But 



WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING. 271 

patience is one of the higher virtues — it is not 
the same as indifference or laziness, nor is it ' a 
clogged obstinacy under difficulties' — it is some- 
thing else than these, the ability to labor and to 
wait ; the ability to stand in face of a mysterious 
providence, not knowing what it means, or why 
and wherefore it is sent, and wait those evolve- 
ments of life which shall bring the interpretation. 
The very word " patience" means suffering, for 
in all wishing and waiting and exploring there is 
an element of suffering. What a trying time 
is that which the affectionate watcher by the sick 
bed has during paroxysms of pain in the sufferer, 
when no relief can be afforded ! If only the 
watchful eye could see something to be done it 
would be an immense relief. But to stand by and 
let pain do its work, this is the trial, this the 
labor. It is a question in such a case who suffers 
most, the subject of bodily or of mental pain. 

Distributed throughout our life are occasions 
which bring the need of patience. The soul, 
needs, for its perfectness, patience as much as it 
needs anything. And yet, let us not mistake; 
let us remind ourselves once more that patience 
is not indifference. Not to care whether life goes 
this way or that, whether it be good or bad in 
quality, whether it be spiritual or sensual, whether 
it end in a blissful immortality or in annihilation, 
to be perfectly indifferent to all this, that is not 



272 WEARINESS IN WELLDOING. 

patience. It is poverty of mind and heart, want 
of vitality. To be able to feel even to the point 
of agony, and yet not to lose hope or heart, to 
believe on still that through all these sufferings a 
God, too good to let us live like brutes and die like 
brutes, is working out something which in the 
glory of its end shall justify the severity of the 
means — to hold that attitude of soul against all 
temptations to abandon it — this is patience. 

And so in regard to well-doing, I admit without 
any debate the impossibility of continued well- 
doing as a mere matter of policy. Apart from the 
idea of immortality — apart from the idea of the 
rewardableness of all well-doing, — persistency 
in any course which costs self-denial and sacrifice 
seems to me out of the question. How is it, then, 
that cases are to be met with of persons who con- 
tinue in well-doing and yet profess to have no 
convictions of immortallity for man? We must 
always make a distinction between that which God 
has put into human nature, its intuitions, and that 
which man acquires intellectually. Take, as an 
illustration of what I mean, the most famous liter- 
ary woman of this century — her intellect, trained 
under the influence of a school of philosophical 
sceptics, became infidel; in the intuitional region 
of her nature, so far was she from being a sceptic 
that she was obliged to let herself out in an ode 
on immortality. Every best character she has 



WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING. 273 

drawn is Christian in spirit, self-oblivious, self- 
sacrificing. All her good sentiments had their 
roots in that intuitional region which is before and 
above the intellectual. And so, it is not surprising 
if sometimes we meet with men and women w^hose 
persistent well-doing is not accounted for by their 
opinions. They have intuitions as well as opin- 
ions. Their intuitions are not created by learning 
or reasoning — their opinions are. A man's 
opinions belong to the school to which he belongs. 
The basis intuitions of his nature belong to no 
school. It is because of this that I believe that 
when, as is reported, Emerson said to a man who 
started an argument with him — "I never argue" 
he acted wisely. When you begin to argue w T ith 
a man you put him on the defensive. You 
summon him to do his best to justify himself. It 
is a simple intellectual contest. Argument has its 
place and its use, but " convince a man against 
his will, he's of the same opinion still." Many 
and many a sceptic is simply the slave of his own 
opinions, he bends the knee servilely to his own 
intellectual greatness. It is strange that men are 
more anxious to appear intellectually strong than 
morally strong, or spiritually percipient. But so 
it is. And therefore I would advise those of you 
who are younger in years than the rest of us, not 
to be discouraged when you find that you do so 
very little by the arguments which to you are 



274 WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING. 

sufficient if not conclusive. Don't argue. State 
that which appears to you to be the truth and 
leave it. If you need a very respectable example 
to justify you, Emerson in New England is 
respectable enough, especially with those who are 
oppressed with the weight of their own culture, 
or continually living in the enjoyment of a con- 
sciousness of being endowed with great intellectual 
ability. Eeligion is the development into sov- 
ereignty of the intuitions of our nature. To kill 
them out is impossible. To the end of life they 
will either trouble us or comfort us. When scep- 
tical men continue in well-doing they but obey 
their intuitions instead of their opinions. That is 
the explanation of the phenomenon. 

Our narrow views of life account for much of 
our weariness in well-doing. Practically, we plan 
for this life and this only. Our sentiments may 
embrace the beyond, our opinions, actions, plans, 
purposes are too much controlled by the example 
set us by the men whose creed is " let us eat and 
drink, for to-morrow we die." And so we sow 
only that which we can reap now — or that which 
the children in our households can reap here on 
earth. Not entirely of course, but too much. 

I do not deny that it is hard, very hard, to con- 
tinue well-doing in the presence of those mean hos- 
tilities which assail every well-doer. In well-doing 
we have to encounter the want of appreciation of 



WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING. 275 

those who have no ability of appreciating anything 
which has not its origin in themselves ; Ave have to 
meet all kinds of criticism ; we have to be sus- 
pected as to the purity of our motives ; and not 
seldom we have to experience the ingratitude of 
those we try to help ; and much else. But, is it not 
enough for the servant that he be as his Master? 
These experiences are not new ; they do not 
belong; to this generation alone. Our Lord's sin- 
less life was one which provoked every form of 
hostility that the enemy could bring against it. 
The troubles of the great Jewish lawgiver began 
when " it came into his heart to visit his brethren." 
David lived quietly until God called him into 
service. Paul was not assailed, but lived in great 
credit until the Lord summoned him to the 
preachership of the gospel. 

That we are made for doing is evidenced by the 
ingenious inventions by which men and women kill 
time, as if the moment we are indolent we arc 
unhappy ; that we are made for well-doing is abun- 
dantly manifest by the almost countless routes 
along which we may move towards some end that is 
in some way beneficent. One cannot contemplate a 
life like that of the English nobleman whoso 
departure from this earth has been so recently 
recorded — the late Earl of Shaftesbury — without 
a sigh at the thought that among that privileged 
class there was only one such man — a man distin- 



276 WEARINESS IN WELLDOING. 

guished by birth, but specially distinguished by 
his consecration of himself to every kind of benev- 
olence by which he could help others. He did 
not simply give money but his time — the days 
and nights as they came, visiting the homes of the 
poorest and most abject. 

When a great orderly crowd of the very poor- 
est and raggedest people in all London assem- 
bled outside of Westminster Abbey as the funeral 
services were held, a man of note, regarding: the 
character of the throng, remarked, " There is not 
another man in England could gather that crowd." 
So that human nature, even at its worst, is not all 
ingratitude. There are so many ways to do good, 
— and with its usual largeness, Scripture leaves 
us free to choose our own. 

But there is the temptation to forget that the 
path of active well-doing is the path of allegiance 
to the Master — of benediction and of growth — 
that here w T e are sowing seed whose fifty-fold 
produce we may never see, but it shall ripen else- 
where. " The due season" may never come on 
earth. But, in due season, we shall reap that 
which we sow. That is a just and benevolent law 
a law that none can escape. I might appeal on the 
ground of self-interest — only in well-doing can 
we develop our own natures into the fulness of 
their powers. To enkindle the mind — to enlarge 
the heart — to awake the imagination, these will 



WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING. 277 

be spiritual results to ourselves, worth while surely. 
Even here on earth, says Lord Jeffrey, " he will 
always see the most beauty in things whose 
affections are warmest and most exercised, whose 
imagination is the most powerful, and who has 
most accustomed himself to attend to the objects 
by which he is surrounded." How are we to get 
that competence to feel the invisible in the visible 
which a "Wordsworth possessed so royally, which 
makes Ruskin the high-priest of the beautiful to 
the age in which he lives? Only by well-doing, 
not spasmodically and occasionally, but of set 
intent and purpose. We may, like the caterpillar, 
spin a very beautiful cocoon and call it our home, 
but even the caterpillar will teach us, if we will 
listen, that if he were to remain satisfied in that 
silken ball which he has woven, it would become 
not his home, but his tomb. Forcing a way 
through it, and not resting in it, he finds sunshine 
and air and life more abundantly. Man says — 
here will I rest. I will make my home in these 
pleasant surroundings. I will shut out the sob of 
sorrow, the wail of the woe-worn, the sigh of the 
suffering, the baying and babblement of the crowd ; 
here, spending my sympathies on myself, I will 
enjoy all that is enjoyable. Ah ! that silken 
cocoon ! — fastened in it you are dead while you 
live. No : says God, that is not what I mean for 
you. And lie calls to His aid His angels, clothes 



278 WEARINESS IN WELL-DOING. 

them in funeral robes, and they call themselves 
Pain, Disease, Death; and they stir up the intel- 
lect, stir up the heart, stir up the imagination, 
compel men to think and to feel about Eternity, 
and then, when it is all over, these disguised angels 
throw aside the masks they have worn and strip 
off the sable garb and lo, underneath is the pure 
white of Immortality. We are sowers of seed 
here. Let us not forget that he that soweth to the 
flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, but he that 
soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life 
everlasting. And, " let us not be weary in well- 
doing, for in due season we shall reap if we 
faint not." 



XX. 

THE DIVINE INVISIBILITY. 



"Verily, thou art a God that hidest thyself. 1 ' — Isaiah, xlv: 15. 

WHEN John the Evangelist wrote "No 
man hath seen God at any time ; the 
only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the 
Father, he hath declared him, (or brought him to 
view)," he put two great truths into one sentence, 
the truth of the Divine invisibility, and the truth 
that man needed to know something definite about 
Deity. It is impossible for us to account for 
human life apart from a life-giver. The mind is 
so made that it demands God. How true it is 
then that in every nature there is evidence of the 
existence of a Creator — a Divine Personality! 
The mind is so made that it also demands that to 
all worthy action there shall be a reward, and so in 
every mind there is the truth that God is a 
rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. Men 
have tried, with a perseverance worthy of a better 
cause, to shake themselves five from these ideas, 
but in vain. Never can Ave be rid of them till this 

270 



280 THE DIVINE INVISIBILITY. 

nature of ours is dissolved into nothingness. Some 
ideas crush us — such as those of the Infinity and 
Eternity of the Divine Nature. We can do noth- 
ing with them. They are represented to the mind 
only by vague expanses without any measurement. 
The wonder is that we can approach them at 
all. It indicates that our nature is allied to the 
Divine nature. The thought of the Divine invisi- 
bility is not so oppressive as these other ideas, 
and yet it is perplexing. There are moods in 
which it is not a welcome thought. It comes to 
us with no comfort and no help. I suppose that 
we all have times in which the greater an idea is 
the more unwelcome it is. We make desperate 
efforts to put large thoughts away from us, and 
confine ourselves to that which is measurable 
and familiar. Yea, have we not often resolved to 
have nothing to do with that which is unfamiliar, 
strange, vast, indefinite, awful? "Why cannot we 
live our life in perpetual disregard of everything 
but the common-place ? I suppose that the reason 
is that in this nature of ours there are possibilities 
which will not be smothered, intuitions which 
struggle to get their heads out of the ocean of 
doubt in which we try to drown them. We have 
in us from babyhood an irrepressible desire to 
know the unknown. Tell a child that there is a 
cupboard into which he must not look, and he will 
think more of that cupboard than of all the rest of 



THE DIVINE INVISIBILITY. 281 

the house. Let there be an apple tree in an 
orchard whose fruit is forbidden, only one tree in 
five hundred, and that tree becomes immediately 
invested with a fascination which is almost painful. 
There is almost a certainty that the fruit of that 
tree will ere long be plucked and tasted. Not 
that which we know but that which to us is un- 
known, that which is mysterious, only partially 
revealed, interests us. It appeals to our imagina- 
tion. TTe are discontented till we know something 
of it. The unknown is the awful. And so in 
heathen religions there is always some mysterious 
place into which only a high priest enters, some 
inner sanctuary veiled from mortal eyes where the 
Divine presence is more perceptible than else- 
where. Even Judaism had it and its veil of the 
temple was not rent in twain till Christ came. 
Sacerdotal churches maintain the idea till this day. 

Idolatry — what is it ? What but the effort to 
make the invisible visible? There is something 
pitiful about it. Though its tendency is ever 
towards materialistic grossness, yet is there 
something pathetic in it, something more calcu- 
lated to bring the tear than the frown. 

When Jesus the Christ came into this world's 
life. He came to answer the longing of the human 
heart after some such expression of Deity as should 
Batisfy that desire to make the invisible visible. 
Idolatry is the cry of man to God to show himself. 



282 THE Dl VINE INVISIBILITY. 

It is the effort of the mind of man to give definite- 
ness to the idea of Deity. In the fulness of time 
Jesus the Christ comes, and one of His disciples 
expresses the longing of the whole human race 
when he cries, " Lord, show us the Father, and it 
suffieeth us." And when our Lord replies " He 
that hath seen me hath seen the Father " He but 
tells us that Almighty God has revealed all that is 
revealable of his personality in Himself. If only 
we knew the heart of God we could be satisfied, — 
anyway, we could have a sort of restful content, 
and could do our work in the world more hope- 
fully and cheerfully ; we could worship with 
more intelligence — we could work with more 
confidence. 

I think that in our noblest moments it must 
seem to us that the demand for a full and perfect 
revelation of Deity is unreasonable, not to use the 
stronger word, absurd. Reasonable enough is the 
demand, let us know the heart of Deity, the 
Divine disposition, how God feels towards us. 
Here we are on an earth that in itself is altogether 
appalling, because of the material forces which 
display themselves. We are in the midst of a 
Providence which buffets us, disappoints us, 
thwarts and troubles us ; a Providence which 
seems at variance with itself. Reconcile one thing 
with another we cannot. Generally speaking, 
most of us seem more to be pitied than envied. 



THE DIVINE INVISIBILITY. 2S3 

We never know whether we can carry out what 
we begin. Affliction may come and lay us low, 
death may come and put the hand of total arrest 
upon us. We walk by faith because we cannot 
do ought else. Now, if only we could know that 
the Infinite Bein^ who sustains and controls all 
this perplexing and involved condition were as 
good as He is great, as loving as the best of 
Fathers to his children, so that if we were 
suddenly arrested in our life here, it would be a 
surprise but not a calamity, — would it not make 
worlds of difference to us ? We all feel that it 
would. And it seems to be reasonable that at the 
right time in the development of this human race 
of ours, that demand should be met. It seems 
tome that it has been met, fully and fairly met, in 
the gift of Jesus the Christ to this world. And if 
only we could clear our minds of the prejudices 
which have been created there by theological and 
denominational controversies, and look at this 
Jesus Christ honestly and candidly, it seems to me 
altogether impossible not to feel that in Him, in 
what lie was and in what lie did, is the gospel for 
humanity, that which every human heart needs. 

And so, while it is still true that the Eternal 
One is a God that bideth Himself, it is also true 
that the prayer of man's heart " Lord, show us the 
Father and it sufficeth us," has been answered. 

But can we not see that the Divine invisibility has 



284 THE DIVINE IS VISIBILITY. 

its uses in the development of this nature of ours ? 
One use is to train us to Reverence. If everything 

should become so common-place to us that we could 
treat it with vulgar familiarity, our life would lose 
its power of self-improvement and development. A 
thoroughly refined and cultured mind will always 
see far enough to be abashed in the presence of 
that which is high and koty. But the vast major- 
ity of minds are not refined and cultured. Nor 
can they be. Think long enough to take in the 
dreadfulness of the scene — of that coarse, vulgar, 
hideous mockery which Jesus the Christ experi- 
enced in those days which anticipated the 
Crucifixion. Think of men striking Him, jeering 
at Him, even spitting in His face, making Him a 
sham King and I know 7 not what else of coarse, 
vulgar, shameful conduct. Recognizing what He 
was — think of it all! Here are men with no 
ability left to recognize the divine superiority of 
that unequalled personality. Brutalized Roman 
soldiers had felt themselves powerless to put a 
finger on Him because of the unearthliness of His 
speech, " Xever man spake like this man." 
Lepers had felt new life pulse in them as His 
shadow fell athwart their path. Fallen women 
had realized a reviving purity as He spake to them. 
Devils had trembled in His presence. In this 
personality there was a mysterious charm, a new 
kind of power, yet men can sink so low, become 



THE DIVINE INVISIBILITY. 285 

so vulgar, so coarse, as to be hideously familiar 
with such a Presence, and treat it with contempt. 
Xow, there is nothing which so bespeaks meanness 
of character as the ability to treat things high and 
holy with contempt. To be capable of respect, 
of esteem, of affection, is to be capable of that wor- 
shipfulness which belongs to God — the witholding 
of which amounts to treating Deity with contempt. 
If we could see our natures as they are, with all 
the possibilities of aspiration and degradation that 
slumber in them, we should have no sort of doubt 
that every man needs something to worship more 
than something to eat. The ability of feeling the 
splendor, the glory, the beauty of things, and 
especially the ability to feel the splendor, glory, 
and beauty in the highest types of human life, this 
ability indicates a condition of soul in which there 
is nearness to God. " It is of all things the most 
melancholy (writes a man entitled to be called 
great) to watch the moral clouding over of life's 
early dawn ; to trace the dim veil stealing o'er the 
artless look ; to notice how the earnest tone begins 
to leave the voice, and every worthy enthusiasm 
dies away into indifference ; how it conies to be 
thought a fine thing to speak coolly of what is 
odious for its vice 1 , and critically of what is awful 
for its beauty. Where this spoiling takes place, 
I believe it is because we mingle no reverence 
with our affection, and accept without awe the 



286 THE DIVINE INVISIBILITY. 

solemn trust of a child's conscience." God hides 
Himself that we may not become coarsely familiar 
with that which is Divine and thus add to our sin 
instead of adding to our Reverence. Further, God's 
hiding of Himself is necessary to our freedom. 

Our Great Teacher puts this thought, as is His 
wont, into the parable of an Eastern lord going 
into a far country and delivering his goods into 
the custody of his servants, that, in his absence, 
they may so use them as to increase them. In 
order to the development of every human life, a 
certain amount of freedom is necessary. The 
over-awing sensible presence of God would com- 
pletely destroy our freedom. It would paralyze 
our activities. It is necessary that men should be 
from under any fettering constraint if the faculties 
they possess are to move easily and with spon- 
taneity towards the end for which they were given. 
Our God is no slaveholder, standing over us with 
uplifted arm ready to bring down the lash on our 
palpitating flesh. So much freedom has He given 
us that it seems to be excessive ; oftentimes when 
crime seems to be here, there, and everywhere 
even appalling. Not that man is left entirely to 
himself. Everywhere he meets law, and law 
means a law-giver. Physically, mentally, morally 
he is compelled to recognize law, in a word, God 
as a God of order and not of confusion. But 
God as law, limiting liberty, and God as Love, 



THE DIVINE IN VISIBILITY. 287 

inspiring hope, and kindling aspiration, are two 
different stages in the revelation of Deity. We 
are all of us anxious to recognize that God is Love, 
and to rest in it. But our ideas of love and its 
nature may be very weak, infantile and ignorant. 
Love is not something that sets law aside. It is 
not a disposition which indulges a child with all 
it asks. " Because I love you so, I let you do as 
you like " — is that the inference proper to love ? 
"While the Almighty One has given us that freedom 
without which our natures cannot develop into 
strength and beauty, — without which there is no 
possibility of that variety in which the idea of 
personality comes out, yet it always seems to me 
that our freedom is a cord which allows us to go 
so far and no farther. The most self-willed and 
reckless of men eventually find that there is a 
limit to their ability of recklessness. Until we 
can see the whole area through which the life of 
the spirit of man moves, I do not believe it possi- 
ble for us to justify the appalling amount of 
freedom which God has allowed to His creatures. 
Still, we can see some of its uses and its necessity. 
AVe can see that it gives room for each individual 
man to show himself. He can choose this or that. 
By the results of his choice he learns something. 
He recognizes his mistakes, he feels his error, he 
builds up his life. He gains experiences which 
may be of incalculable use to him in the hereafter. 



288 THE DIVINE IJY VISIBILITY. 

All this suggests itself. But is it not easy to see 
that if the flaming eye of Deity were visible upon 
us all the while we should be paralyzed into 
inaction ? Our rightful freedom makes the demand 
upon God that He hide Himself from our vision. 
Moreover it is necessary to our perfectness of 
nature. There must be a limit to the growth 
of this nature of ours, a point attainable at which, 
in every moment of our existence, we shall feel 
like praising God for our creation. There must 
be for man a state of life w T hich is itself bliss — 
harmony — music, in which the internal and exter- 
nal are in accord. Now we live by effort, by 
endurance, by overcoming difficulties, by braving 
dangers, by surmounting obstacles, by resisting 
evils. It is a kind of chronic warfare with men 
and things. 

But in us are ideas of something entirely differ- 
ent and immearsurably superior. Those ideas are 
endorsed by Jesus the Christ. But perfectness in 
man is not simply a matter of outward condition, 
it implies internal correspondence with an enviro- 
ment in itself perfect. In order to perfectness of 
inward condition there must be the ability of faith 
in a Power outside ourselves, and of faith in all 
around us, the ability of perpetual hope, the ability 
of undying love. It is not possible for us to 
conceive of a state in which these three elements 
of life will not be needed. And it is not possible^ 



THE DIVINE INVISIBILITY. 289 

so for as we can see, to develop these virtues 
unless we have room for their growth. The 
invisibility of God is necessary to their growth. 
Sight is very much inferior to trust. The most 
perfect communion of soul with soul, the most ex- 
quisite fellowship of mind with mind, are possible 
only where undoubted trust and undying love are 
possible, nowhere else. Now, if our God were to 
show Himself as over us, watching us, noting us 
all the time, every day and every hour, so that the 
eye saw Him, would we not feel as the slave feels 
when the Master is there whip in hand ? If the 
Almighty One were simply an Almighty Task- 
master, or an Almighty Detective, what pos- 
sible room would there be for the growth of 
these three royal virtues, faith, hope and love? 
But now He hides Himself, conceals His presence 
and His workings, so that we have to bring faith 
into exercise. And nothing so ennobles and 
purifies a spirit as the exercise of faith in some- 
body. The opposite of faith is fear and suspicion. 
Train a child under the influence of these and see 
what the result will be. Nothing good, a blight 
will be on that child's soul for life. There are 
some men who need watching all the time. If 
you employ them and are to get any work out of 
them you must keep an eye on them. Of what 
order are these men? The very lowest to be found 
anywhere. Nothing noble in them. 



290 THE Dl VINE INVISIBILITY. 

And yet, though God hides Himself and refuses 
to be the Supreme Detective of the Universe, He 
fills Heaven and Earth. He is never absent. We 
cannot get away from Him. TTe cannot escape 
Him. He hides Himself, in the presentative 
totality of His Being, but He does not hide all 
His thoughts. Every material thing is a thought 
of God presented to us for our recognition. It 
used to be assumed that man would become un- 
spiritual if he admired Nature, the heavens, the 
earth, the cattle on a thousand hills, the birds, 
the flowers. No man, with a Bible in his hand 
ought to have felt so. How full of poetry is the 
Bible ! It sin^s its highest revelations. And the 
more spiritual in mind we become, the more cer- 
tainly shall we find " sermons in stones, books in 
the running brooks, and God in everything." Na- 
ture is a library of Divine thoughts to the spiritu- 
alized mind, to no other mind, — thoughts 
presented in forms of beauty, put there for us to 
find them. You know how children like to 
discover things, and so we are put upon discover- 
ing Divine thoughts. They are spoken to us in 
parables. These are everywhere, and what we 
call our discoveries are simply the wider open- 
ing of our eyes to see what was there all the 
time. "All our boasted discoveries are only of 
things that for thousands of years have stared us 
in the face and we could not recognize them. We 



THE DIVINE INVISIBILITY. 291 

must marvel rather at the tardiness than the swift- 
ness of our apprehension and confess ourselves 
but fools and slow of heart to perceive what the 
finger of God has plainly writ." 

But not His thoughts only has God spread out 
before us. He has made us feel His feeling. He 
has put fatherhood and motherhood into men and 
women. He has put sisterhood and brotherhood 
also. He has made souls capable of friendship. 
He has put pity, compassion, sympathy, love into 
human hearts. And though these are necessarily 
adulterated, yet there is much of the genuine arti- 
cle to be found. All these have to be accounted 
for. They are not in the dust out of which our 
bodies are made. It is next to impossible to 
believe that any man is serious when he talks 
as if pity and sympathy, compassion and love 
and all these elements of moral beauty are the 
result of "a fortuitous concourse of atoms." 

For myself, I don't care whether the physical 
nature of man was, by what we know as the 
method of evolution, developed from the lower 
and the lowest, or whether, by some more sum- 
mary process, it was created. It is the result not 
the process with which we are concerned. It is 
interesting to know how the rocks were stratified, 
how the hills were cast up, how the valleys were 
ploughed. But the result rather than the process 
concerns me. I can plant potatoes on the hills ; 



292 THE DIVINE INVISIBILITY. 

I can graze cattle in the valleys. I can train my 
mind to a feeling of the beautiful by the undula- 
ting variety all around. And so this organism of 
ours may have come up from those other creatures 
with four pillars to support their frame, instead of 
two. The vertical man may once have been physi- 
cally the horizontal animal. It makes no differ- 
ence as to the process. Now he is man — capable 
of love, of pity, of sympathy, of compassion, and 
these are not animal. They are the Divine feel- 
ings reproducing themselves in the creatures 
prepared to incarnate them. And though God 
hides His Infinite Personality, draws around Him- 
self a veil which none can rend — we know some 
of His thoughts, and some of His feelings. His 
whisper is in our souls. We name it conscience. 
He never leaves us, nor forsakes us. And, with 
the Hebrew poet we can ask, " Whither shall I go 
from Thy spirit — whither shall I flee from Thy 
presence? If I ascend up into Heaven, thou art 
there ; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold thou 
art there. If I take the w r ings of the morning 
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea ; even 
there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand 
shall hold me." 

And with Paul, "In Him we live and move and 
have our being." And when we come to Jesus 
the Christ, the veil of concealment is so thin that 
we can see through it. Arc we too rash when we 



THE DIVINE INVISIBILITY. 293 

say — Deity reduced from His Infinity, coming 
within limitations such as we need on this earth 
would be Perfect Humanity ? Wonderful language 
is tltat " know ye not that ye are temples of the 
Holy Spirit." Man regenerated is the true tem- 
ple, and at the inmost of every regenerated human 
soul is a ray from the Central Sun of the Uni- 
verse — God Himself. Thus God is hidden, yet 
manifest. And so, though God hides Himself 
from us, we cannot hide ourselves from Him. 
"Can any hide himself in secret places that I 
should not see him, saith the Lord ; do not I fill 
Heaven and Earth, saith the Lord?" Here, even 
here, is the ground of our hope and expectation. 
The touch of God is everywhere — beyond it 
we cannot go. 






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